It’s a new Bundesliga season that got underway this past weekend, but some of the stories to be told are already well known to the attentive audience. For example, the episode with Borussia Dortmund’s guest appearance at VfL Bochum, which ended 1-1 like in the past two seasons and at the end of which Emre Can formulated a few sentences that would have fitted in with Dortmund’s previous trips to the neighboring city.
“They were simply more greedy and grippy,” said the BVB captain about the passionately fighting Bochum team, before explaining his own performance: “That wasn’t a good game from us at all, that’s not what we aspire to. We’re not playing our game, we’re playing Bochum’s game.”
However, this course of the game came as quite a surprise, because Dortmund actually knew what to expect from this opponent in the narrow Bochum stadium. Coach Edin Terzic had explicitly asked before the game to show off their own superiority instead of getting involved in the intense duel that Bochum can do better. But apart from a slightly better phase at the beginning of the second half, most attempts to get to the VfL goal with flat passes failed. “We were completely surprised by the intensity of Bochum, they were cheeky, extremely aggressive, courageous. We lacked resistance in the first half,” said goalkeeper Gregor Kobel.
Felix Nmecha, who was in a Bundesliga game for the first time in a Dortmund starting line-up, did not have access to the game at all. Can’s passing game was flawed, Ramy Bensebaini’s mood was declining and Sebastién Haller looked somewhat weakened, just like on matchday one. “We lost the duels, lost the first ball and then lost the second ball, if that happens you don’t win a Bundesliga game,” said Can. Although Borussia Dortmund is at the top of the table with four points, it is still far from the level that a title aspirant has to achieve in order to keep up with the best in the long term.
Stoeger puts Bochum in the lead
Even the week before against 1. FC Köln, BVB had never acted like a top team that finds good playful solutions against an opponent who is weak in terms of football. The sobering realization: Bochum was simply better, especially in the first half. And so Kevin Stöger’s early opening goal went quite well with the course of the day. The Bochum midfielder hit the far corner with a shot after an unsuccessful defense by Dortmund’s Marius Wolf (13′).
This ball didn’t seem completely untenable, and BVB keeper Gregor Kobel hadn’t had his best day either after being the best Dortmund player on the first day of the game. “I expected a cross and he hit it pretty well,” said the Dortmund keeper, who also exuded little security in other moments and acted imprecisely with his foot, especially in the game. “Basically we wanted to show a better face on the offensive, that only looked decent for a short period today,” said coach Edin Terzic, alluding to the 20 minutes after the break when Donyell Malen, favored by a goalkeeping error by Manuel Riemann, to make it 1-1 (56th). But in the end, VfL was equal again, “the performance was not sufficient,” was Terzic’s conclusion.
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Dortmund constantly had to engage in intense duels instead of being able to play the football of a Champions League participant, because Bochum seem to have exactly the same character this year as they did in previous seasons. Big defeats like the 0:5 in Stuttgart from the previous week leave no deep marks, even if the team of coach Thomas Letsch got into a difficult phase after the break and were lucky not to fall behind when Nmecha shot the post (62nd). devices.
But BVB never played dominantly for a longer period and with Patrick Osterhage’s deflected shot shortly before the end, which Kobel deflected against the post (86′), VfL could even have won. “I’m absolutely proud of this performance, it was passionate, it was closed,” said Letsch, while Dortmund are going into the coming week with a lot of problems.
2023-08-26 17:11:27
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