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KShortly after the news coverage ended at 8 pm, the plane with BVB soccer professionals landed back in Dortmund. The glasses Erling Haaland wore didn’t suit the weather at all, but they did suit the business trip. The Norway striker wore sunglasses with lenses that were at least very close to the rose-red color spectrum.
When Mats Hummels declared a 2-0 loss to FC Augsburg in the afternoon, these glasses would have fit on his nose. “I have the feeling that we really played a very good game in many areas,” said the central defender. Lucien Favre went in a similar direction when he said “we didn’t play a bad game overall”. As with almost all disappointing results analysis, the Borussia Dortmund coach added that his team should have shown “more patience”. “If one side is blocked, you have to play backwards or across the board,” he said before adding the magic word “fast” in the decisive addition.
At the beginning of the game, BVB managed a few more times to use this tactic, which Favre liked so much. Opportunities arose, though none of the best. The longer the Augsburgers successfully countered with their rugged nature and sometimes hit the ankle instead of the ball, the Dortmund game was reduced to crossing, back and forth.
Ball possession rate and passing stats now look great, the result is miserable. “This result is difficult to accept,” Favre said, referring to the pseudo-superiority that, as the season progressed, turned a young and highly talented team into a lazy mass. The replacement of the experienced Marco Reus and Julian Brandt further accelerated this process.
No turning point against Augsburg
In Haaland’s debut in January this year, BVB was 2-2 and 3-1 in Augsburg, winning 5-3 thanks to three goals from the Norwegian. Such a change was never in sight on Saturday in front of 6,000 viewers.
This time, Borussia took less than a day than last season to show this pattern, in which they fall more often with Favre. The same thing happened at 1: 3 at Union Berlin, a climber who got excited in August 2019, but was significantly limited. In the previous season it happened in Augsburg, among other places. Against Werder Bremen it happened several times, including twice in the DFB Cup, in which there is nothing to repair.
Giovanni Reyna and Jude Bellingham are 17, Jadon Sancho and Haaland 20. A significant drop in performance, as happened in the 3-0 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach over the previous week, seems more possible than with a team with a highest mean age. But in Augsburg it was the courage that the Dortmunders lacked, the willingness to play risky passes, to speed up combinations.
“It has nothing to do with young players”
Therefore, the simple and effective tactic of FC Augsburg worked. “The team implemented our plan very well and it performed for each other and not just for each other,” said coach Heiko Herrlich, who once played for BVB. Felix Uduokhai called the success, which began with a header in the 40th minute, as an “absolute victory”. Daniel Caligiuri scored the 2-0 (54th). The former Schalke’s blow was significant. At first he was faster than the approach of Dortmund Thomas Meunier, then he prevailed shoulder to shoulder in the duel. “We’ve had matches like this before, and that’s annoying,” said Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc. However, as in the interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, he rejected a connection to the Middle Ages: “It has nothing to do with young players. The older players also made mistakes. People often think too simply. “
After two early wins, which the FCA achieved for the first time in its Bundesliga history, the club was at the top of the table at least overnight. BVB, for its part, left points against all expectations. Wednesday’s Super Cup at FC Bayern should be an even more annoying task than it is. “I’m not thinking about this game yet,” Favre said in Augsburg.
In recent years, the initial duel between the two industry giants was the first criterion for prospects in the championship race. In this sense, Favre had provided a clarification after the victory against Mönchengladbach. Bavaria is the best team in the world, and those who don’t see this have no idea about football. Borussia de Westfalia followed the words of a maximum of second best. Crossed, backwards and especially too slow.
