Just mediocre in the Bundesliga, worse in the first half of the season than it has been in ten years: Borussia Dortmund is in big trouble. After the game against Eintracht Frankfurt also with the referee. Coach Nuri Sahin’s job, on the other hand, is reportedly not being discussed much yet.
In the crisis, BVB captain Emre Can is leading the way – and is not afraid of unusual ways. After the final whistle of Borussia Dortmund’s Bundesliga game at Eintracht Frankfurt (0-2), his walk led him into the dressing room of Daniel Schlager’s referee team. Instead of taking responsibility for themselves, BVB mainly blamed the referees for their third defeat in the third game this year.
According to the team, Schlager denied them two penalties in the second half. First Jamie Gittens went down after contact with Nnamdi Collins (77th), a little later Serhou Guirassy fell after a duel with Arthur Theate (85th). “The first thing is a clear penalty. I don’t know what the VAR did again today,” said sports director Sebastian Kehl at DAZN.
Can has no understanding
But the referee saw things differently according to the TV images and defended his decisions. Regarding the duel between Collins and Gittens, he said: “I see the contact. Then it’s like this as a referee: Is the contact the cause of the fall? I had big doubts about that. That’s why I decided to let the game continue.”
The VAR also did not recognize a clear error in this case. “We only want interventions in the case of clear wrong decisions, which was not the case,” said Schlager. It was similar with the situation with Guirassy. “I see the really short hold, that wasn’t the cause for me either,” says the referee.
-Captain Can had already complained vehemently on the pitch and had seen the yellow card, but after the conversation in the dressing room he was stunned. “I talked to him – he still thinks it wasn’t a penalty. I don’t understand that. If you go into the box at what feels like 35 km/h and then there’s contact like that – how can you not get a penalty? You have to have the courage, even here in Frankfurt, to go out and look at it. If you then say: Still no penalty – okay, I don’t understand it, I can’t explain it.”
“We have to get through this now”
While Frankfurt has 36 points and is in third place, Dortmund has fallen to tenth place, and Borussia Mönchengladbach could even overtake them this weekend. “It’s another low blow. We lost three games in a row. It’s frustrating. The table situation is disastrous, no question about it,” said managing director Lars Ricken. The 2:3 against champions Bayer Leverkusen and the embarrassing 2:4 at newly promoted Holstein Kiel were followed by a defeat at Eintracht.
And yet the commitment to coach Nuri Sahin remains. “We will continue in this constellation. Nuri has the trust,” said Kehl. Ricken also confirmed that the 36-year-old will be back next Tuesday (9 p.m./Amazon and in the ntv.de live ticker) will sit on the bench at FC Bologna: “Nuri has had our backing so far, he will continue to have it. It is his and our responsibility that we have to get the best out of Borussia. Nuri will sit on the bench in Bologna with the clear expectations that we now need victories and experiences of success.”
Sahin could do little with his temporary job guarantee. “The arguments are performance and results. I don’t need confirmation every three days that I’m in office. We all know about the situation.” Sahin only took over the job at BVB at the start of the season, but the first half of the season was Dortmund’s worst in ten years. Now things didn’t get any better. “The situation is catastrophic and doesn’t do justice to the club. But we have to get through it now. You won’t hear anything different from me until the last day that I’m a coach here,” said Sahin.
