Karneval doesn’t play a particularly important role in the culture of the Ruhr area, but on Sunday evening there was a party on the Dortmund south stand that was as roaring as the parties in the pubs of Cologne or Düsseldorf. “Who will be German champions, BVB Borussia?” chanted the supporters of the Revierklub after the 4-1 win against Hertha BSC, Dortmund’s eighth competitive win in a row, as a result of which the club is now tied with FC Bayern in second place in the table. “It’s a nice feeling to expand the series,” said Julian Brandt. “It wasn’t the prettiest football, but it was efficient.”
At first it didn’t look as if this game would find such a clear winner. The beginning was tough for BVB, also because the team once again allowed themselves to be negligent on the defensive, which had recently become rare. But they’ve had the good fortune that teams so often get in good times. To make it 1-0, an unsuccessful shot by Marco Reus landed at Karim Adeyemi, who had the presence of mind to heel the ball into the goal (27′). That was a small stroke of genius from the attacker, who is in such good form at the moment, and has now scored one goal in each of his four most recent competitive appearances.
Adeyemi has a run, because the 2-0 was actually his goal. The winger beat Filip Uremovic in the sprint and made a brilliant pass to Donyell Malen at the far post, who made it 2-0 (31′). Unfortunately, the Dortmund player of the hour injured his thigh muscle so badly during his strong goal preparation to make it 2-0 that he had to be substituted and might be out for a longer period of time.
Adeyemi likely to miss
“He probably won’t be available to us for the next few games,” said coach Edin Terzic, who the youngster comforted with a hug before Adeyemi was led into the dressing room, supported by two coaches. “I think it’s going in that direction,” said BVB managing director Carsten Cramer when asked whether Adeyemi had suffered a muscle injury. “It didn’t look good, you could see that it really hit him.”
As far as Dortmund’s stability in the game against the ball is concerned, this evening was mixed. Nico Schlotterbeck once again stumbled a ball in his own half, which has not happened to him for a long time, but Florian Niederlechner missed the following chance for the Berliners (21st). Goalkeeper Gregor Kobel had to fend off shots several times. The fact that Dortmund’s defense wobbled in this game, in which the recently unused captains Marco Reus and Mats Hummels were back in the starting XI while Jude Bellingham and Niklas Süle were on the bench, will lead to discussions. Especially since the sloppiness in defending had consequences right at the beginning of the second half.
A quick attack from Berlin led to Suat Serdar in the Dortmund penalty area, who staged Lucas Tousart with a small back pass. The Frenchman had little trouble making it 2-1 (46′). Niederlechner had another good shot (51′), several dangerous balls flew through BVB’s penalty area in the 15 minutes after the break, but found no takers.
“In my opinion it wasn’t a 4-1 game, you saw a lot of what we wanted to do,” said Berlin’s Marco Richter. “We can see that we are showing a different face than in the first half of the season.” After a good hour, when Bellingham and Sebastién Haller, who was also initially rested, came into play, the Berliners found less and less space for their own ball actions. A nice free-kick from Reus to make it 3-1 (76′) decided the game before Julian Brandt also scored to make it 4-1 (90′).
