Team Focus: Dortmund’s Perfect Week Suggests They’re Not Finished Yet

There is no such thing as a friendly between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. Their meeting at the Westfalen last season, 20 days before the Champions League final, was ostensibly a dead rubber but contained ugly confrontations between players and coaches alike during its course. 

Even if it is clear that Bayern’s breathtaking intensity has been curbed since the Bundesliga was officially won three weeks ago, the edge remained on Saturday – most notably in Rafinha’s extraordinary late dismissal for clawing Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s face. 

The strong Bayern XI selected by Pep Guardiola suggested a desire too, but the real surprise was wearing yellow on Saturday at the Allianz Arena. After a season of so many injury disruptions, the continued (and finally consummated) saga of Robert Lewandowski’s departure to Bayern and doubts over other key figures, Dortmund are emerging into the light. 

Tuesday’s superb win over Real Madrid could be said to have provided the best of both worlds; showing Europe that Dortmund still belong at the top table but allowing them to refocus on finishing second in the Bundesliga’s closing weeks, bringing a calm to the Westfalen that will be welcomed by many fans.

In isolation, beating two of Europe’s premier sides by an aggregate of 5-0 is astonishing. If it appears that BVB have garnered relatively little for it in concrete terms, Jürgen Klopp will see it as a foundation for evolution, if not total revolution. The coach has been ready to shake things up for a while, but matters really started to gather momentum just over a week ago, when Klopp reacted strongly to a poor first-half performance against Wolfsburg (who BVB again face this week in the DfB Pokal semi-final) in the Bundesliga. 

Something changed. Nuri Sahin and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were both hauled off at the interval, and spent the second half of the match looking suitably sulky under drawn hoods on the bench. Meanwhile, inspired by their replacements Milos Jojic and Erik Durm, Dortmund turned things around and put Dieter Hecking’s side away, despite the Lower Saxony club having 19 shots to the home side’s 10 in the match as a whole. 

There is no suggestion that either Sahin or Aubameyang will pay any sort of long-term price for their lacklustre efforts that day, despite the fact that they both began the return with El Real on the sidelines to the immediate benefit of their replacements. 

The club announced on Thursday night that they would be taking up their option to make Sahin’s return from the Bernabéu permanent, and both he and Aubameyang started Saturday’s match at Bayern. Sahin was especially reinvigorated and determined, making a match-high 7 tackles, while Aubameyang set up Dortmund’s second goal for Marco Reus.

Yet the message was clear. Nobody is safe. Klopp has hinted at this before, with the exits of the promising pair Moritz Leitner (loaned to Stuttgart for two years) and Leonardo Bittencourt (sold to Hannover with a buyback option) last summer. Neither has quite set the world on fire in these two struggling sides, but they have had the opportunity to start 17 Bundesliga matches apiece, an unlikely scenario had they stayed in Westphalia. 

At the Allianz, Klopp took another ruthless spin to the future, dropping Lewandowski to the substitutes’ bench. By the time the Poland striker made his entrance, BVB were already three goals to the good; in fact, Lewandowski replaced the scorer of the third goal, Jonas Hofmann. It was understandable given Lewandowski’s situation in waiting to move south in the summer, and even more so in the context of the campaign (witness Leverkusen leaving out Sidney Sam altogether for the match with Schalke, his future employers, in February). 

Lewandowski’s nominal replacement is now known of course, with Adrián Ramos joining from Hertha Berlin next season. The 28-year-old Colombian may not quite be Lewandowski’s equal, but he is more than the straight, old-fashioned number 9 that some have suggested. Ramos has added 5 assists to add to his 16 goals in 29 starts (compared to Lewandowski’s 17 goals and 6 assists in 27 starts. Interestingly, Ramos has only required 5.5 shots per goal, compared to Lewandowski’s 5.8. 

Crucially, he will get far improved supply at his new club. Reus has 10 Bundesliga assists in addition to his 14 goals. Mkhitaryan, the scorer of Saturday’s opener against Bayern and whose pace creates opportunity, has 9 assists in 25 starts in the Bundesliga alone, despite a relatively modest 1.6 key passes per game. When the Armenian sends, a yellow shirt tends to receive. 

In this sense, Mkhitaryan is key to Dortmund retaining their identity as they evolve. Klopp’s side are all about economy when at their best, and they ticked both boxes at the Allianz. BVB had just 29% possession but produced 6 efforts on target to their hosts’ 3. It would be overstating to say that possession doesn’t matter to Dortmund, but they have rarely needed to boss the ball to command the game. October’s win at Arsenal saw them take 43% of the ball, a figure that dropped to 41% when they carved Zenit St Petersburg apart at the Petrovsky in the first knockout round. Even in last month’s 3-0 win at lowly Hannover, BVB had only 47% of the ball. 

In fact, one sensed they were taking a leaf or two from the Bayern book. Sokratis’ raking pass for Hofmann to finish the job could easily have been Dante to Franck Ribéry. Klopp knows he has work to do to breathe life into the Bayern v Dortmund rivalry next season, but he has already got started.

Can Dortmund close the gap at the top of the Bundesliga next season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below