Emotions play a fundamental role when football is played in Dortmund, the hot-tempered Bundesliga location, and the usual questions about how people are feeling at the moment have a special character. It’s not just about the power of the famous south stand and the question of whether the team will be able to draw strength from the impulses from the stands. A kind of self-examination is currently taking place week after week, the central question of which is: How does it feel? Because the basic state of being is changeable, unpredictable and influenced by currents in the environment that do not always correlate with the perception of the protagonists.
This was also the case after the 3-1 win against Eintracht Frankfurt, when Mats Hummels stated: “We have won the last four games, we are now going into the international break with a much better feeling than we had indicated two weeks ago. Now we’re enjoying it.” At the same time, however, this joy is clouded in the coming days because Hummels, like his colleagues Julian Brandt, Nico Schlotterbeck, Emre Can, Karim Adeyemi and Niklas Süle, will follow what happens in the national team with mixed emotions.
Apart from Adeyemi, just a few weeks ago these players could relatively safely count on being part of national coach Julian Nagelsmann’s squad at the European Championships in the summer. Now it is suddenly a realistic scenario that Niclas Füllkrug will be the only Dortmund professional in the German European Championship team. And Hummels, who has never been a particularly subtle diplomat, gave the impression on Sunday that his coach Edin Terzic shared responsibility for his non-nomination.
The defender was in BVB’s Bundesliga starting eleven against Frankfurt for the first time in the current calendar year, which is why he “expected” not to be called up by Nagelsmann. “The others are too good for someone to be nominated who doesn’t play regularly.” said Hummels, it wasn’t entirely clear whether there was a gentle reproach behind these words. Terzic, who is better at avoiding controversy, pointed out that there were “reasons” why Hummels played so little. In January, the Dortmund defense chief had a severe case of flu, which initially confined him to bed and from which he subsequently only slowly recovered.
BVB could benefit
So after his illness he just sat on the bench. But Hummels had an excellent game against Eintracht, his diving header to make it 2-1 was brilliant. The template for this goal was provided by Julian Brandt, who also had the flu this winter and said he lost six kilos as a result. The 27-year-old midfielder is only slowly getting back into form.
Schlotterbeck and Can, on the other hand, were not set back by infections; they are missing from Nagelsmann’s squad because they simply did not play consistently enough and were too prone to errors. Can carefully contradicted this representation on Sunday evening: “You write your part, I’ll think of my part,” he said. “It wasn’t all good, but it wasn’t all bad either. Today it was okay for me. It can carry on like this.”
However, Can was lucky that the VAR withdrew a red card against the midfielder, who had touched the ball when he fouled Ellyes Skhiri, but hit his opponent’s leg with his other leg and then claimed: “Such a foul in England It’s not even a foul.” The Frankfurt team saw it completely differently, but it is undisputed that both Can and Hummels – who caused a penalty in the Champions League game in Eindhoven – are risk factors with their tendency to tackle. Nevertheless, Can said he still hopes to take part in the European Championships: “We still have three months left, I definitely want to be there and will fight.”
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He will initially fight this fight in the BVB training center in Dortmund-Brackel, where Terzic finds an unusual situation. Instead of other international breaks, when crucial parts of the squad were away, he can now work “with a large training group,” as he was pleased to note. Can, Schlotterbeck, Brandt, Hummels and Adeyemi are sad, but BVB could benefit. In April there are not only games at FC Bayern, against Stuttgart, against Leverkusen and in Leipzig, but also the quarter-final duels in the Champions League against Atlético Madrid.
