Borussia Dortmund is only 90 minutes away from reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League. However, the bloodless performance in Eindhoven should worry the record runner-up. They have to improve extremely to achieve their goals for the season. But how?
It’s the question of these weeks: Who owns football? The professional team from Borussia Dortmund found their own answer to this on Tuesday in the first leg of the round of 16 of the Champions League at PSV Eindhoven. It said: not us! Despite a largely sedated performance, the Bundesliga giant’s part-time defensive machines managed a 1-1 draw and thus a good starting position for the second leg in three weeks. They are still undefeated in the 2024 calendar year. That’s it for the good news.
Later they felt disadvantaged again. After a tackle from Mats Hummels in his own penalty area, first Eindhoven’s Malik Tillman and then BVB lost their faith. Dortmund’s refereeing decisions in away games in the Champions League have repeatedly become the central topic of review of the game. If anyone is disadvantaged, it is the Germans and of course BVB too, said BVB consultant Matthias Sammer in his role as an Amazon expert.
Hummels already disadvantaged by VAR in 2021
“What a joke of a penalty against us,” commented “scapegoat” Hummels on the scene on social media just a few minutes after the final whistle. “Again! I can’t believe that there can be decisions like today, against Chelsea or against PSG, with the VAR.” He had forgotten about his sending off in a 1:3 loss against Ajax Amsterdam in November 2021. At that time, the defender was responsible for a tackle on the halfway line against the then Ajax player Antony, who died in a second, only to soon be free again. Happily jumping up, seen by referee Michael Oliver Rot. BVB lost, was eliminated from the Champions League a short time later and Hummels complained, quite rightly, about an “absurd wrong decision” by the English referee. He struggled with the VAR’s non-intervention.
Coach Edin Terzić felt duped once again. “It is the third time that we are discussing the referee after a game in the knockout phase of the Champions League,” he said, probably referring to last year’s game at Chelsea and the 2021 quarter-final against Manchester City. “It’s slowly enough,” complained the outgoing managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke about Srdjan Jovanovic’s decision in the game at PSV Eindhoven and people wanted to reply to him: “Yes, it’s slowly enough! Finally play football again!”
The crisis is just one defeat away
Despite the endless complaining about the VAR secondary theater of war, there can be no more excuses after this game. Borussia Dortmund continues to wander through the season, only the results are currently preventing a total collapse. However, undefeated in 2024, BVB continues to slide towards a crisis that is likely to break out after the first defeat.
The record runner-up in the Bundesliga is playing too anemic, boring and without any inspiration and is once again in a phase that coach Edin Terzić described with broad chest in the first half of the season: “We tried to draw our conclusions in the summer. Less “sexy, more success. We have shown beautiful and sexy football long enough over the last ten years, but in the end it did not lead to achieving our maximum goals.”
So far, Sahin and Bender have not brought any healing either
These maximum goals have long since been written off, because just a good two weeks after Terzić’s statements after the eighth matchday of this season, Dortmund’s series of 17 unbeaten league games in a row ended with a 0-4 debacle at home against FC Bayern Munich. The 21 points from the first nine games they only added six points in the following seven until the winter break. In the DFB Cup they were eliminated in Stuttgart, and in the Champions League they surprisingly came first in the group. That may have saved coach Terzić’s job.
In the winter he was still supported by two club legends. There are new assistant coaches in Nuri Åžahin and Sven Bender. There were also two short-term loan solutions for the shaky giant on the transfer market: returnee Jadon Sancho and Dutchman Ian Maatsen. But despite four wins and three draws since the league restarted, the trend is once again dramatically pointing backwards.
Ball passages that are interrupted after five passes. A midfield around Marcel Sabitzer and Emre Can that was hopelessly overwhelmed in the build-up of the game, an overzealous Maatsen, who repeatedly posed a threat to his own goal with a pass rate of 63 percent and sloppy ball losses, as well as someone who kneeled before every ball and was in the air Niclas Füllkrug and Sancho, who always made wrong decisions on the wing, made Dortmund’s game, which had a haphazard build-up, a torment for every spectator.
Horrifying passing stats
Donyell Malen’s remarkable goal to make it 1-0 alone promised something like healing. But the dream goal was ultimately a flash in the pan. After 90 minutes there were only 77 percent of passes received, only 46 percent of ball possession and only eight attempts to shoot on goal, six by Malen alone, who at least tried against his old club. Niclas Füllkrug’s statistics read particularly bleak. He only played 13 passes, seven of which reached a teammate; there were six fewer passes than those from keeper Alexander Meyer to defender Nico Schlotterbeck, who played the ball back to Meyer a total of eight times. Only the 13 passes from Hummels to Meyer were in between. Füllkrug tried a shot on goal. That’s it. He was hanging in the air. Was cut off.
“Less sexy, more success” in other words. And no one could contradict Terzić when he said at the press conference: “If we win our home game in three weeks, we will move on to the next round.” Nobody wanted to argue against Nico Schlotterbeck, who said his team had “potential for improvement” with the ball. Things got more complicated with Hummels. After his tirade, like Schlotterbeck, he addressed BVB’s problems and then said: “I saw a beatable Eindhoven today.”
Eindhoven not dissatisfied
The former BVB coach Peter Bosz, now active at Eindhoven, saw it differently and was not dissatisfied despite everything. “A defeat would have been unjustified given the game,” he replied to Hummels: “I can live with a draw.”
There were surprising sounds that showed how much respect there still is for this Borussia, who at best can be said to be disgusting to play against. “We still have a chance, but we could have made it a little easier for ourselves,” said midfielder Joey Veerman, referring to his team’s lack of experience. It is exactly this that has already carried BVB into the round of 16 in the group games against Newcastle United, Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan and could now perhaps even be enough for the quarter-finals. The only question is what should happen then and of course who owns football? Certainly not the current BVB team.