Borussia Dortmund shines in the Champions League
Et must have been mixed feelings with which Sebastién Haller accompanied his team’s comfortable 3-0 (2-0) victory over FC Copenhagen on Tuesday evening. The Borussia Dortmund striker, who is suffering from a testicular tumor that has since been successfully operated on, was in the stadium for the first time as a BVB player, where he was cheered up with a good dose of affection and a lot of sympathy, and at the same time had to watch his colleagues at the end of a great evening of football with much more were showered with love.
Captain Marco Reus was celebrated in the final phase after a brilliant performance with standing ovations, the team danced in front of the singing south stand after the final whistle. “I’m happy that we won this must-win game,” said Reus, who then formulated a few surprising sentences: “I thought we didn’t do so well in the first half, we would have had a lot more have to create opportunities.”
The rivals from Munich actually cultivated this kind of grounding self-criticism in moments of joy. Now this form of hunger for more and more seems to be developing at BVB. It will be exciting to see if this works. In truth, there was little criticism after what will go down in history as the first Champions League event to feature a full stand-up stand since 1998.
Recently, standing room has also been allowed in the European Cups, so the famous Dortmunder Süd sang and cheered with joy about a nice game, while the guests from Copenhagen organized a glowing pyrotechnic excess. A veil of smoke lay over the lawn for almost the entire season. “It was loud,” said Dortmund coach Edin Terzic, who was only dissatisfied with the first minutes of the two halves.
Outstanding Marco Reus
Copenhagen produced a dangerous finish after just 20 seconds when a Carlos Zeca shot went just wide of the target, but Dortmund then created a crushing dominance that resulted in two goals before the break. After 34 minutes, Julian Brandt played a great pass to Reus, who dribbled into the penalty area and scored with the left to make it 1-0. It was the 60th 1-0 lead that the national player scored for BVB, Terzic said: “The way he has advanced in the last few games is outstanding, that’s how we imagine a captain.”
BVB were better, they were stable, they showed a high level of commitment and the 2-0 win was an obvious consequence of this good performance. Raphael Guerreiro completed a nice move down the left to make it 2-0 (42nd). The template for this goal came from Giovanni Reyna, who came on after 22 minutes because Dortmund’s series of injury accidents continued that evening. Gregor Kobel tore a muscle fiber in the final training session, the goalkeeper will be out for several weeks and was replaced by Alexander Meyer.
It was also revealed earlier in the day that Jamie Bynoe-Gittens had to undergo shoulder surgery. Even before things really get going with the intensive workload leading up to the Winter World Cup, BVB is threatened with a shortage of staff. At least Terzic was able to give Mats Hummels a break, the central defender duo was Nico Schlotterbeck and Niklas Süle, who not only defended well, but also initiated a goal each with strong ball gains in the first half. “The goal was that we get this dominance on the pitch, it was a very good performance overall,” said Terzic. And that was true of the second half as well.
The Copenhagen team had another good chance early on, but Meyer made an excellent save against Lukas Lerager (47′). Now the BVB supporters fired pyros together with the Copenhageners, while the players seemed more and more controlled. But Modeste, who played the first Champions League game of his career (55′), Brandt (58′, 59′) and Youssoufa Moukoko (81′) missed wonderful opportunities.
So Dortmund defended their lead with consistently high intensity, until Jude Bellingham completed another remarkable move to make it 3-1 (84th), again Reyna had been the preparer. “I think that was a great start,” Terzic finally summed up; Now it’s about playing consistently well, which is exactly what we haven’t been able to do in the past few years.
