When match winner Maximilian Beier staggered off the pitch five minutes before the final whistle, he was happy that his legs hadn’t completely failed him. With obvious difficulty, the young international made it over the sideline. Nothing more was possible. Beier, like many of his teammates, had completely exhausted himself. Against second-placed RB Leipzig, previously undefeated in 19 games, Borussia Dortmund managed to buck the trend with a 2-1 win.
Dortmund’s breakout even came after Leipzig took a brief lead when Luis Openda took BVB captain Emre Can out of the game with a backheel trick and Benjamin Sesko made it 1-0. But shortly afterwards, after a powerful header from Felix Nmecha, Beier spooned the ball into the Leipzig goal to equalize 1-1, and in the 65th minute, striker Serhou Guirassy scored the winning goal after a classic cross from the unleashed Beier. However, the remaining ten professional field players had to push their internal reserves with their running energy to save the lead. Beier wasn’t the only one who ended up on the proverbial gums.
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Emre Can, who succeeded in almost everything that evening after weeks of heavy criticism, probably wanted to emphasize his team’s obvious willingness to suffer when he said after the game: “That’s our goal, that’s how we want to play football. The manner was great today. Lots of injuries, that’s just our fate and we have to fight against that.”
The deserved victory was particularly important for Dortmund’s coach Nuri Sahin, who had recently come under heavy pressure. And by no means a given, as Sahin had to do without ten injured professionals, including goalkeeper Gregor Kobel. The last squad, however, was more concentrated and more hands-on than Dortmund had managed to achieve in all three competitions in the last few games, as BVB in the Champions League against Real Madrid, in the league against FC Augsburg and most recently in the DFB Cup had suffered three defeats at VfL Wolfsburg.
Sahin even wanted to have seen the best performance so far since he took over as head coach at the start of the season: “The boys not only did well in terms of fighting, but also in terms of play. Over ninety minutes, it was our best game of the season.” The fact that the team had lined up more or less by itself made the seriousness of the mission clear to perhaps even the last member of the team. Sahin had the courage to position Felix Nmecha, who had not always been completely stable, in the defensive six position in the team. He played a strong game in an unusual 4-1-4-1 system, as did midfield director Julian Brandt, who had the best running performance of all players. Overall, Sahin’s team managed to never allow themselves to be pushed onto the defensive. Unlike the bankruptcy at Real Madrid, for example.
Leipzig coach Rose says: “If you keep losing the ball too early against Dortmund, then they will crush you here in the stadium.”
The Dortmund audience once again contributed something else, because in the last quarter of an hour at the latest, the infamous “Westfalenstadion Roar” celebrated its comeback in the current season: no spectator was allowed to sit. The force of the 81,365 people in the Dortmund stadium made the BVB players run longer and further than they might have achieved away from home. Guirassy and especially Beier, who scored his first points scorer for Dortmund, also dug around and worked within the scope of their defensive options.
In the end, Leipzig coach Marco Rose, on the sidelines for the 100th time at RB, had no real explanation for the strangely inhibited style of play. He saw a “very deserved victory for Borussia Dortmund. They were cleaner on the ball, played more physically than us, more passionately.” Rose’s goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi even prevented anything worse from happening with several brilliant saves. He saved against Beier, Gittens and Brandt. His solution to the rather average performance of his previously favored team sounded apt in the analysis: “If you keep losing the ball too early against Dortmund, then they will crush you here in the stadium.”
BVB will have to prove again on Tuesday, in the Champions League against Sturm Graz, that such energetic performances are not only possible occasionally. It is quite possible that Sahin will be missing the next injured player, Marcel Sabitzer. Sabitzer had to be substituted with muscle pain in his calf. Leipzig meets Celtic Glasgow on Wednesday.
