BVB – Lazio Roma: frightening stats: Dortmund’s most important man has been missing for weeks

Nothing more and nothing less than the group victory in the Champions League is at stake on Wednesday at 9:00 pm in the match against Lazio Roma (on the Eurosport.de live ticker). At home of all places, one would almost like to say from BVB’s point of view these days, because Borussia hasn’t been a home powerhouse for a long time.

Just last weekend the Blacks and Yellows lost 2-1 to 1. FC Köln, who had not won since March. A bankruptcy that seemed to come out of nowhere and was “unacceptable” for coach Lucien Favre.

But how surprising was the defeat really? After all, BVB had problems in its own stadium throughout the Corona period.

The following statistic should come as a surprise to many, but five of the seven phantom home games BVB has hosted in the Bundesliga so far have been lost.

A clear indication of the lack of spectators in the stands to the team. In other words: Black and Yellow has had to do without its most important man for months: the twelfth.

“I wouldn’t say it’s 100 percent because of the empty stands. But I have to be honest. It’s a different thing playing at Signal Iduna Park with 81,000 fans and in front of the packed south stands,” Thomas Delaney said at the Tuesday press conference. before the duel with Lazio Rom closed openly. But the numbers are indispensable.

“It’s an advantage for the visiting team,” Delaney said afterward. But that also means “that sometimes it is an advantage for us to play without a spectator.”

It’s notable that leadership and mindset players, in particular, find it difficult to alienate their colleagues in the face of empty ranks. Axel Witsel and Captain Marco Reus serve as excellent examples. Both are far from their best, and in games where things are not going so well, they don’t look like leaders on the move, but instead dive in with the rest of the team.

Sure, Reus is struggling to recover from a prolonged injury and Witsel is not the speaker he often becomes due to his international experience and reputation, but the 17, 18, 19-year-olds who are certainly very talented. , they need them in difficult games. Leadership from the experienced.

On the offensive part of the field, BVB loses this advantage.

So far, according to the perception from the outside, this burden falls mainly on the shoulders of Mats Hummels and Emre Can. Two players who mainly play central defense, even if Can got ahead of the defensive midfield alongside Witsel against Colonia.

In the game against Lazio, the 26-year-old will now be absent due to a blow to the ankle. Thomas Meunier will also miss on the right back. Whether the recently so strong Raphael Guerreiro will be fit in time will only become clear shortly before the start of the game.

A home win against Lazio Roma secures the group’s victory, one point is enough for a safe place in the round of 16. A secure income of around 35 million euros would comfortably cushion losses related to the crown.

BVB is based on the displacement principle. An embarrassing league failure like that of 1. FC Köln “shouldn’t happen,” Favre said with a shrug on Tuesday: “But we can’t change that. We are leaders in the Champions League and we want to continue like this.”

Consequently, the 1: 2 against the Bundesliga cellar boy was marked as an inexplicable slip, as was the German national team. Since the also sobering 1: 3 at Lazio in the first leg, BVB have “corrected everything very well”, as Favre emphasized.

Among other things, with two victories at home in the Champions League, without fans.

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