Most of all, there was a sense of relief at Borussia Dortmund after the hard-earned 1-0 against Sporting, about the result, the second CL win – and about their own learning curve.
“I’m even happier because we took a tough game. That’s actually something we usually lack in order to be successful. But this is how you win 1:0 in a game in which you don’t shine,” said an exhilarated Mats Hummels after the game on “Amazon Prime”.
Marco Rose was also pleased with the attitude of his players, but also had something to criticise: “We had a few too many simple mistakes in our game. But I think we had outstanding counter-pressing in the first half, including a total of three offside goals. Overall, it was a solid performance without having shone,” said the BVB coach.
Dahoud has a tweak in his inner ligament
The not entirely easy personnel situation also made the success all the more pleasing from Dortmund’s point of view. Captain Marco Reus (“It was decided this morning, the game was so important – I didn’t want to miss it”) returned after irritation of the capsule in his knee. But goal scorer Erling Haaland, who was officially honoured as top scorer of the 2020/21 Champions League season before the match, continued to miss with muscular problems.
And after only a few minutes of the match against Sporting, another player, Mahmoud Dahoud, promptly reported to the hospital. “Mo has already made a self-diagnosis and we don’t trust that for now. He will be examined more closely. But the inner ligament hurts and he is already in pain,” Rose made it clear that – unlike in the case of Emre Can – Dahoud’s deployment at least at the weekend is probably not an issue.
Brandt’s cold start and the zero
The early change (Julian Brandt came in for Dahoud in the 8th minute), Rose made clear, was not an ideal situation. “For Jule, of course, it was a cold start, it wasn’t planned like that, he’s coming off an injury. One comes on, the other has to leave already. We would like that to be different. We had to reinvent ourselves a bit. Of course, with Erling we are missing an element up front, the power, also on crosses.”
But all in all, the positive impressions also outweighed the negative ones for Rose: “I should probably talk about Donyell (Malen; ed.), who scored. That was important for the boy. We played to nil for the first time since Wiesbaden (in the cup on 7 August). It’s Champions League, you saw the quality of the opponents again today. We really got stuck in and worked hard. It was a decent game from us.”
