That close competition you are talking about ended without success for 11 years in a row and Bayern Munich won the Bundesliga title every single year. It sometimes looked close, but Dortmund never won it. Now it is beginning to get serious for Dortmund and they have four games now that are rather easy and should be won.
They were only able to compete to be runners-up and were never able to beat Bayern Munich's dominance in the Bundesliga competition. Last season was the biggest opportunity for Dortmund to take over the Bundesliga title, but in the end they gave up the title to Bayern Munich in the last match at home and this is really embarrassing in my opinion.
If they don't at least get 10 points out of those four games, I doubt that this is going to end with the qualification for the Champions League this year. They have all the hard games towards the end of the second half of the season and I doubt that they will win a lot of those games against teams like Stuttgart, Bayern or Leverkusen.
Dortmund's next four matches will be against teams that are not much stronger than them and it should be easy for them to get full points. But because the competition is getting tougher, it is possible that Dortmund will lose some points in this match. Now their position is stuck in the top five of the standings and if Dortmund don't try harder to secure a win then I also doubt that they will qualify for the Champions League next season.
I think I said this before, but they didn't lose the title in the last match at home, they lost the title in a dozen of matches they should have won or tied before the last match was played. Dortmund is just not good enough and it has been like that for a while now. They have good weeks and then it looks as if they were able to break Bayern's dominance, but then the disappointment is so huge that nobody can trust their eyes what's happening. The last game last season was only the tip of the iceberg. The whole drama enfolded over the course of the whole season.