North Korea said “No”. Not for them the anti-competitive, financial-fair-play-ridden*, snore-and-bore-fest that is Bundesliga these days. The other 208 Fifa members did all tune in against their better judgment, however, and they were unexpectedly rewarded with a very fine game that might be described as a pretty good advert for German club football. Where else can the 16th-placed team so nearly beat the league leaders on their own patch?
Granted, Borussia Dortmund don’t really belong in the relegation zone but that’s where they were and continue to be after coming up just short at the Allianz Arena on Saturday night. Five defeats in a row, seven points from 10 games, 17th spot. “This is shit,” Jürgen Klopp said after the final whistle – but it’s worse than that. The pile of excrement has grown to historic heights. Not even the relegated BVB team from the 1971-72 season started this poorly.
If the first half, with its 12-second-attack for Marco Reus’s goal and a couple of other decent chances, had proved that the Black and Yellows are still comfortably the second best team in the league and Bayern’s equals on a good day, the second 45 minutes brought out the full breadth of the current problems again. Dortmund faltered physically, lost a key player – Mats Hummels, strained ligaments, out for three weeks – to injury and then gifted Bayern two goals via a couple of beastly individual mistakes. “Subotage”, Bild should have called it but sadly they didn’t. “I was in the thick of it for both goals,” admitted the unlucky substitute Neven Subotic, who had first involuntarily laid off the ball for Robert Lewandowski’s equaliser, then lost the ball to Franck Ribéry and fouled the Frenchman in the box. Arjen Robben, Subotic’s good friend, converted for the winner five minutes before time.
“In the second half, we were who we are,” Pep Guardiola put it, rather poetically. The Catalan bemoaned Bayern being only “spectators” at the Dortmund show before the break but they still had managed to create a handful of excellent goalscoring opportunities with some free-flowing attacking football that would have annihilated lesser sides – the excellent Roman Weidenfeller had other ideas though. Bayern had more control as well as cooler heads in the box after the interval and, in the end, Dortmund’s strategy failed.
In the past four seasons under Klopp, they have often exposed Bayern’s weak spots and make them appear a diminished side. On Saturday, they brought out at the best of them, Mario Götze excluded. The former Borussia midfielder could not have been more anonymous if he had worn one of those “Everything you ever wanted to know about sex” sperm onesies in the Allianz Arena section with the logo-shaped crowd. Him aside, it was easily the most impressive domestic performance of the champions in this campaign.
Dortmund can still take heart that from minutes one to 45, they were who they used to be – before reverting once more to who they are right now. “I see an upward curve in the last two weeks,” said the chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke. “But of course a look at the table worries me”. The Champions League should again provide some relief on Tuesday, when the shambolic Galatasaray come to town. However, Sunday’s appointment with Borussia Mönchengladbach, who will love to do to Dortmund what Dortmund do so well against nominally better sides – hit them with super-precise counterattacking football – is a pretty frightening prospect. Will the board, the players and the supporters continue to be this calm if they were to lose for an eighth time this season?
Recent history suggests Klopp’s talented team can still finish in the Champions League places – their speciality has been going on strong runs after Christmas. Such a resurgence might still be too late to sway Reus’s mind, however. Watzke admitted it would be hard to keep the winger at the club if Dortmund do not make the top four next season. Bayern, to Dortmund’s understandable disgust, have said they will make a decision in the winter whether they’ll trigger the 25-year-old’s release clause that becomes active in the summer.
It is by no means a given Reus himself is keen on the move south – he will surely wait for firm offers from Spain and England before making up his mind – but unlike Hummels, he is noticeably refrained from pledging his loyalty to the club and left Munich without comment. Dortmund’s predicament is certainly not helping their chances to tie him down for longer. Klopp’s biggest achievement, three trophies aside, has been the continued growth and progress in the face of four year’s worth of doom and gloom predictions. He needs to at least bring back the belief that the club are still going in the right direction to ward off the vultures, Bavarian and otherwise.
*There is no FFP in the Bundesliga. But that doesn’t matter for the purpose of this argument.
Talking points and results
• Dortmund are out of the running for the championship but Wolfsburg (4-0 winners at Stuttgart) and Gladbach (3-1 v Hoffenheim) aren’t. As Süddeutsche Zeitung noted, with less than 50% irony, Bayern have somehow neglected to systematically destroy these two sides – they’ve unwittingly even strengthened Wolves by selling them Luiz Gustavo in August 2013 summer. Fools! The command centre at Death Star Säbenerstrasse better sign three or four players from each club to keep those new challengers at bay. As things stand in the evil empire, these two very disparate rebel factions – Wolves are bankrolled by Volkwagen whereas Gladbach have followed Dortmund’s blueprint to grow organically, by sheer virtue of employing a superb coach in Lucien Favre and very good players – are both only four points adrift. Not quite as exciting as the most exciting league in the universe™but not bad.
• Hamburger SV v Leverkusen 04 was a slugfest masquerading as a Bundesliga game. The return of Hakan Calhanoglu to his former club had upped the aggro in the stadium and the bad vibes soon affected the players. No wonder the statisticians lost count. Some said there were 50 fouls, some 54, but everyone agreed that the home side had broken the record for most rule violations this season. “It was clear from the first minute, how [aggressive] Hamburg wanted to play,” said the miffed Bayer coach, Roger Schmidt. The worst challenge didn’t make it into the stats, however. The Leverkusen left-back Giulio Donati cleared out Marcell Jansen after the whistle had already gone. In amid all the handbags, Rafael van der Vaart converted a penalty to notch up Hamburg’s fourth (!) goal of the season and secure the very important three points.
• “Kachunga’s revenge”: not the new Quentin Tarantino flick but Bild’s lovely take on the Paderborn striker’s goal against Hertha. Elias Kachunga, 22, who had spent half a fruitless season in the capital, came up trumps with a header in the 3-1 win on Sunday. André Breitenreiter’s promoted team sit pretty in seventh spot and are suddenly being confronted with two very strange words: “Europa” and “League”. Breitenreiter is having none of it, though. “All we want to do is to put on a bit of winter fat, points-wise” said the coach of the league’s cheapest side.
Results: Schalke 1-0 Augsburg, Hannover 1-0 Frankfurt, Stuttgart 0-4 Wolfsburg, Bayern 2-1 Dortmund, Mainz 1-2 Bremen, HSV 1-0 Leverkusen, Gladbach 3-1 Hoffenheim, Paderborn 3-1 Hertha, Köln 0-1 Freiburg.
