“Willpower”, “passion”, “aggressiveness”, “fight”. The message was a familiar one in Dortmund ahead of the match, but the messenger wasn’t. Thomas Tuchel, the 43-year-old head boy of the so-called “laptop coaches” in German, young, cerebral, strategy-obsessed managers who prefer a cold, hard look at the numbers to heated rhetoric, had ventured deep into Jürgen Klopp territory on Friday, proclaiming the need to harness the emotional power of the occasion and to add a crucial “third level” to go with tactics and technique.
“That will be the basis of beating Bayern,” Tuchel confidently predicted. And he was right. Borussia Dortmund, by their own admission, didn’t have their best game against the German champions on Saturday night, but their remarkable ability “to hang in there and not give up” in the face of the visitors’ relentless if ultimately imprecise attacks got them over the line by the narrowest of margins. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s 11th-minute winner, a goal scrambled in with a stretched out leg and celebrated with push-ups in honour of French rapper Gradur (whose “Sheguey 10 - Tractions” video exalts the joys of a rigorous workout) befitted the gritty nature of proceedings. “At the moment, we find it a bit hard to play with the ball, that’s why we had to battle,” André Schürrle said, “it was proper grown-up stuff today.”
Beating Bayern, “the ultimate statement,” as Tuchel called it, was one part coming-of-age story, one part adaption – the ability to persist by performing against type. The smooth but somewhat brittle veneer of the opening weeks of the season were replaced by unpolished blocks of concrete, to the delight of the crowd. “We played a little bit in the style of Atlético Madrid,” the sporting director Michael Zorc said, smiling after the final whistle in a deliriously happy Signal Iduna Park. “We only had a third of possession, our passing rate wasn’t very good but we defended brutally well.” Borussia’s first success at home over their southern rivals since 2012 was borne out of courage, too. Tuchel had surprised his counterpart Carlo Ancelotti by fielding two strikers, Aubameyang and Adrián Ramos, in a highly flexible system that shifted from 3-5-2 to 3-4-3 and 5-3-2 over the course of the 90 compelling minutes with little loss of traction.
“We knew that we would have to suffer in certain spells, it wasn’t possible to prevent that and therefore not a [realistic] ambition for us,” Tuchel explained. “That’s why it was important to keep up the intensity in the challenges.” As it happened, the player who personified Dortmund’s unexpected resilience best was Mario Götze. In his first game against his former employers, the 24-year-old returnee provided the assist for the goal, courtesy of an inch-perfect cross through the legs of ex-BVB captain Mats Hummels, then bravely helped to stem the red tide in a central, unglamorous role. “Mario came into this with little game time and not much confidence but he worked incredibly hard today and showed that he can do decisive stuf,” said Tuchel. “It was a great performance and high time for him to put some meat on the bone [by being involved in a goal]”. The tasty takeaway for the Westphalians consists of a halved, three-point gap behind Bayern (and six behind the cuddly, universally popular league leaders RB Leipzig) as well as the realisation that their relatively young, not quite accomplished team will be title contenders after all this season. They are strong enough – or Bayern weak enough, if you will. “Their code has been cracked,” WAZ.de noted.
The captain Philipp Lahm was under no illusion that their first defeat of the campaign would provide both encouragement and joy for all non-Bavarians. “It’s wonderful for the league, exactly what everybody had wished for,” the right-back said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Lahm had a second, more personal reason to be put out, having been substituted by Ancelotti for Rafinha 22 minutes before the end. “It doesn’t matter whether I was surprised or not,” the 33-year-old offered curtly, “the manager is responsible for changes.” Lahm didn’t have to say what everybody could see: Ancelotti’s intervention backfired, as Bayern’s early second-half momentum after the introduction of Douglas Costa vanished along with the skipper. Dortmund regained composure to eke out the win. For Süddeutsche Zeitung, the visitors’ defeat was yet another example of the qualitative demise since the departure of Pep Guardiola. The Catalan’s possession football was “sharp as knife,” wrote the broadsheet, “but the blade has become blunt”. Movements in the final third were indeed lacking in edge and thrust once more in the Signal Iduna Park, (“we didn’t create enough chances,” Lahm said) but the story wasn’t quite as clear-cut as far as their overall game was concerned.
Bayern’s passing game and positional play, so sloppy in recent weeks, was in fact much improved on Saturday, their dominance of the ball more imperious than in any of the previous games under the Italian. This time around, his team were undermined by individual problems - the continued disorientation of Thomas Müller, Xabi Alonso’s rustiness, Franck Ribéry’s errant decision making – rather than any fundamental flaws in the (admittedly rather rigid and predictable ) 4-3-3 system. Whether the increasingly nervous board and one or two players who privately argue for more tactical direction from Ancelotti will be able able to look past the unsettling result is another matter, however. Some professional football analysts maintain that Bayern’s underlying numbers – creation of goal-scoring opportunities, prevention of opposition shots – have actually held up better under the new regime than appearances would suggest.
But public perception is just as important for a calm working environment at Säbener Strasse. The sense that Bayern have become vulnerable or at the very least a team more ordinary this season, is something the bosses find hard to live with; future opponents as well as contenders at the top of the table will be emboldened, conversely. On the plus side, Ancelotti will be forced to work a little harder in coming weeks. The manager would have realised by now that his men won’t win a fifth title “with their hands in their pockets,” as he had suggested before taking on the job last summer. Sympathy for the champions’ unexpected discomfort, as you might expect, is in short supply.
Talking points
Hot on the heels of the incredibly pertinent debate about the rights and wrongs of calling Dortmund v Bayern the clásico/Classico/Klassiker, another, no less important dilemma: is it acceptable to refer to RB Leipzig as a potential German Leicester City? Tuchel certainly thinks so. Following the promoted side’s 3-2 away win at fellow Gegenpressing aficionados Leverkusen, the Dortmund coach opined that Ralph Hasenhüttl’s side could “definitely do a Leicester”. Bayer coach Roger Schmidt concurred. “There’s absolutely no reason why they couldn’t keep going until the end,” he said. If “Leicester City” is merely shorthand for an unexpected title run, the situation is indeed comparable. But there are obvious differences, too.
Leipzig’s budget is that of a first division mid-table club, not that of a newly promoted team with no Bundesliga pedigree, for starters, so the miracle wouldn’t be all that miraculous, in purely financial terms. Yes, both the Foxes and Die Roten Bullen are owned by foreign billionaires, but while exotic sugar daddies are a dime a dozen in the Premier League, Dietmar Mateschitz’s Red Bull group – for whose Red Bulletin magazine yours truly contributes a weekly column – set up RBL specifically as a franchise in the fifth division in 2009, circumventing Bundesliga regulations with a creative corporate structure. The club’s unashamed artificiality rides roughshod over German football’s (largely) organic ethos, which is why you won’t find many neutral cheerleaders for the new league leaders.
Köln’s (temporary?) return to the elite is less controversial but their latest win – “They are unkaputtbar!” cheered Express – came at the expense of neighbouring rivals Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Rhine Derby. Marcel Risse’s 90th-minute winner instantly became the stuff of local lore: the midfielder struck a free-kick from 34 metres that changed direction a couple of times to beat Yann Sommer in goal. “It’s the most emotional goal I have ever scored,” said the 26-year-old, “(Anthony) Modeste told me to shoot, not cross.” A most unusual request from a centre-forward, especially one as hot as the French striker, who added a 12th goal to his tally. But Risse, the Rhine Ronaldo (he’s got “MR7” stitched into his boots) did as he was told, to score his second goal in such spectacular fashion this season. “These shots are like rabbits,” Köln keeper Thomas Kessler said enigmatically, “he’s been bothering me with them in training for four years now. I told him to aim a little lower.” Good advice all around.
Results: Leverkusen 2-3 Leipzig, Dortmund 1-0 Bayern, Gladbach 1-2 Köln, Mainz 4-2 Freiburg, Wolfsburg 0-1 Schalke, Augsburg 0-0 Hertha, Darmstadt 0-1 Ingolstadt, Hoffenheim 2-2 Hamburg, Bremen 1-2 Frankfurt.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RB Leipzig | 11 | 14 | 27 |
| 2 | Bayern Munich | 11 | 17 | 24 |
| 3 | Borussia Dortmund | 11 | 14 | 21 |
| 4 | Cologne | 11 | 10 | 21 |
| 5 | TSG Hoffenheim | 11 | 7 | 21 |
| 6 | Hertha Berlin | 11 | 7 | 21 |
| 7 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 11 | 7 | 21 |
| 8 | Mainz | 11 | 1 | 17 |
| 9 | Bayer Leverkusen | 11 | 0 | 16 |
| 10 | SC Freiburg | 11 | -5 | 15 |
| 11 | Schalke 04 | 11 | 2 | 14 |
| 12 | Augsburg | 11 | -4 | 12 |
| 13 | Borussia M'gladbach | 11 | -6 | 12 |
| 14 | Wolfsburg | 11 | -5 | 9 |
| 15 | Darmstadt | 11 | -11 | 8 |
| 16 | Werder Bremen | 11 | -16 | 7 |
| 17 | FC Ingolstadt | 11 | -13 | 5 |
| 18 | Hamburg | 11 | -19 | 3 |
