As Dortmund close on the Bundesliga title, it is Leipzig’s first win at Bayern that will continue to resonateOne of German football’s primary clichés is that of Bayern-Dusel – an undeserved helping of fortune that would help them somehow get it over the line in the last knockings, however well or badly they had played. A sense of inevitability. If you make your own luck in this game, though, Bayern Munich have not made nearly a good enough job of manufacturing any for themselves in recent weeks.For the champions, licking their wounds after Saturday evening’s stark, humbling home loss at the hands of RB Leipzig, Borussia Dortmund’s Sunday teatime victory at Augsburg was almost irrelevant, even if it did mark...
There were moments against Dortmund when manager seemed doomed but VAR and Kai Havertz came to the rescueFour minutes before half-time, with Borussia Dortmund still 1-0 up from the first leg, with Chelsea still playing in a way that was both careful and frantic, a team that is always trying to leave the house and constantly forgetting its keys, there was a sense of something being settled, some elemental question filtering across the Stamford Bridge pitch.That question was not simply: can Chelsea actually score a goal? Although it was also, and to a very large degree, can Chelsea actually score a goal. But on a more basic level, it was: which way is this thing going to fall? What does...
Edin Terzic’s side showed newfound steel and grit in their tense 2-1 win against RB LeipzigThey say that history is written by the winners, but it never felt, before this season, as if Borussia Dortmund would be in the position to pick up their pen. Now, it might be different. It felt that way when Nico Schlotterbeck, the crown prince of defensive drama in these parts, saw Timo Werner’s late shot speed past Alexander Meyer, Dortmund’s stand-in goalkeeper, and reacted to clear off the line with a mixture of chest and shoulder, all but sealing the win. Schlotterbeck clenched his fists, celebrating it like a goal.It wasn’t quite Roman Weidenfeller smothering Arjen Robben’s penalty late on when Bayern visited Westfalen...
The Norwegian’s influence sometimes looked lacking against Dortmund but his patience again proved devastatingErling Haaland poses the professional writer a problem. Most of the time, he doesn’t do very much. He jogs towards the ball. He jogs away from the ball. He prowls and waits.He had a grand total of 26 touches, which is quite a lot by his standards, but still comfortably fewer than both goalkeepers. And so discussing Haaland’s influence becomes something of an unsatisfying binary, pivoting around a single volatile question: did he score or not? If he did, his contribution is likely to have been decisive. If not, then you’ve spent 90 minutes watching a tall blonde man look at things. Continue reading...
After his side somehow lost to Werder Bremen from 2-0 up in the 89th minute, the returning BVB coach has work to do“Even as a child, you can’t imagine a sequence of play that spectacular,” said Ole Werner. The 34-year-old Werder Bremen manager is the Bundesliga’s youngest head coach but anyone would have celebrated as wildly on the pitch after this tumultuous ending at Signal Iduna Park, which left Borussia Dortmund stunned.“I have no idea what happened there,” said their shocked captain, Marco Reus, who has seen a lot of improbable twists in his decade at the club. Continue reading...