A New Year's Resolution for Borussia Dortmund Boss Thomas Tuchel

With the start of a new year, gyms become packed and diets are started—even though most gyms will be empty again and diets will be long cancelled once February comes around. New Year's resolutions tend to have a short shelf life.

Nonetheless, we have one for Borussia Dortmund head coach Thomas Tuchel, and maybe he'll find it easier to go through with because it'll only come in effect in February. It's a fairly simple one: Focus on the UEFA Europa League.

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Overall, Tuchel's first season at the helm of the Black and Yellows couldn't have gone much better so far. The giant footsteps left behind by Jurgen Klopp haven't been too big for the 42-year-old. "Tuchel's first months in charge have been a triumph of many small tweaks, on and off the pitch," wrote Raphael Honigstein for ESPN FC.

Tuchel's Dortmund side are one of the most exciting teams in European football, they have a clear identity on the pitch and—considering where they came from at the outset of the season—they have exceeded expectations at the halfway point of the season.

Having won 22 of their 30 matches across all competitions, there aren't many blemishes to find. The performances in the three losses in the Bundesliga fit that bill, but every team has those days—every team of mortals, that is, so Bayern Munich don't count.

The one blemish that could end up really hurting them going forward, however, came in the group stage of the Europa League. The Ruhr side had already punched their ticket for the round of 32 after four matchdays in Group C, but an unnecessary loss at Krasnodar on November 26 meant BVB would end up second in their group.

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Since the luck of the draw wasn't with Dortmund, they're facing one of the strongest opponents they could've faced in FC Porto. Beating the Portuguese giants will be a tall task, but one that the Black and Yellows should be able to fulfil. 

In order to do so, however, Tuchel needs to focus on the Europa League. As luck would have it, that seems entirely possible.

His team's impressive first half of the season in the Bundesliga sees them in second place with a comfortable cushion of six points ahead of Hertha BSC and—more importantly—nine ahead of fourth place, currently held by Borussia Monchengladbach.

It seems unlikely that any of the teams still within shouting distance of BVB will play a consistently great second half of the season and really challenge them for a spot that grants direct qualification for the UEFA Champions League, which was the target Tuchel set out to accomplish in his first year at the club.

The Bundesliga schedule could end up convincing Dortmund's boss to focus on Europe. Before their first meeting with Porto, they play at Gladbach and at Hertha—and at Bayer Leverkusen between the round-of-32 ties.

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The Black and Yellows have the chance to effectively seal a Champions League spot in February, which should mean the focus shifts to Europe almost by default. Of course, this could be a moot point if Dortmund stumble out of the blocks in 2016, but given their strong showings in the first half of the season, that seems unlikely.

Tuchel might well find the Europa League to be the easiest competition to win this season, for it's the only one where they can't face Bayern. Usually, the DFB-Pokal is considered to offer the easiest path to silverware, but the collision course with the Bavarian giants makes that rather obsolete.

Winning the Europa League would put Dortmund in a select club: They'd be only the fifth team to have won all three major European trophies, following Juventus, Ajax, Bayern and Chelsea.

Europe may appear as a treacherous path to the Black and Yellows, what with a lot of games and unfamiliar opponents waiting to fell the odds-on favourites (via Oddschecker.com), but it is also one worth exploring for Tuchel's Dortmund.

Lars Pollmann is a featured columnist writing on Borussia Dortmund. He also writes for Yellowwallpod.com. You can follow him on Twitter.