BVB: Bundesliga Shift to Pragmatism

Fábio Silva couldn’t let go of his colleague, who is also his competitor, after it was clear that the evening would end well for Borussia Dortmund. It was the 83rd minute of the game, the south stand celebrated the goal to make it 3-0 by crisis striker Serhou Guirassy and were delighted by the hope of a successful second half of the season.

After four goals during the first three matchdays, Guirassy had only scored one more time, which had become more and more of a disruptive factor. Recently his game had been paralyzed, and against Werder Bremen coach Niko Kovač had set up Silva instead of the top scorer from the previous Champions League season.

“Sometimes you might have to come off the bench to relieve the pressure,” Kovač said later, “the plan worked.” There is the prospect of a breakthrough in the Guirassy problem, and the fact that Silva, who was fighting for minutes, was so happy about it indicates a good team atmosphere.

In any case, the goal marked the end of a first half of the season in which Borussia Dortmund changed in a remarkable way.

The Revierklub is second behind FC Bayern Munich; Dortmund have only scored more than 36 points in the first half of a season in the past decade: under Lucien Favre in 2018/2019. “We are satisfied with the development of the team,” said Kovač, “we only lost one Bundesliga game.” But no one at BVB is completely satisfied.

At the end of the first half, parts of the audience whistled despite a 1-0 lead, which Nico Schlotterbeck had managed early on with a header from a corner (11th minute). Before the break, BVB played extremely incorrectly and were lucky that Bremen missed their chances. There was a lack of order in the pressing against the ball, and with the ball there were a number of technical errors and inaccuracies. “We had no control at all,” said Marcel Sabitzer, who finally made it 2-0 in the much better second half (76th).

Schlotterbeck also explained that the second half was “confident,” but noted that the team “still has a few steps to go.”

It’s strange with these Dortmund players this season: the results in the Bundesliga are good, and if it weren’t for the superiority from Munich, they could perhaps even be considered very good. Compared to the first half of last season, enormous progress can be seen. The team also scored six goals in the first two games of the new year, which indicates great entertainment value. And yet there is a lack of forces that could generate anything like real enthusiasm.

After the 3-3 draw in Frankfurt at the start of the year, the joy was dampened because two points were lost and the three goals conceded hurt.

Now the team had tormented their audience with a very tough first half. Winning the title is hardly possible after being eliminated from the DFB Cup, and there are actually only two players who consistently perform at a very high level: Schlotterbeck and goalkeeper Gregor Kobel, who said at the end of the first half of the season: “Actually, we could have gotten even more, that can motivate us for the second half of the season.”

Club boss Carsten Cramer, who has been in office since late autumn, currently likes to talk about the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty and advocates putting the positive things in the foreground. But are stability and renewed qualification for the Champions League enough to delight the demanding audience and satisfy the players? “We are footballers, it’s primarily about the A grade,” was the answer from Kovač, whose pragmatism has become a defining element at BVB.

This 3-0 win can also be seen as the result of a strong coaching performance. Kovač provided the right impulses during the break that solved the problems of the first half. His idea of initially putting Guirassy on the bench and thus relieving him of the pressure also worked. In addition, Fábio Silva did not score a goal of his own, but was the strongest offensive player in terms of football, especially in the first half, after he was finally in the starting eleven.

At the same time, at the halfway point of the season, there is a lot that is unfinished and needs to be improved. “We are not on a perfect path, but on a good one,” said Schlotterbeck, who actually still seems to have hope of winning the German championship. In any case, he announced: “I don’t feel like saying the championship will be decided in March.”

And in one category, Dortmund are undoubtedly far ahead of Bayern after the first half of the season: they have significantly greater potential for improvement.