It will be a race against time, but Borussia Dortmund are hopeful of winning it: Against Mainz on Saturday, not only Erling Haaland and Mahmoud Dahoud could return to the squad.
At the start of the training week before the Bundesliga match against Mainz 05, BVB coach Marco Rose has challenged his team in two sessions at once. The 45-year-old was probably pleased to learn at the start of training that the personnel situation was less dire than he had feared in the middle of last week. Although Raphael Guerreiro and Youssoufa Moukoko are definitely out due to fibre tears they suffered in their national teams, the trend is much better for some other Borussians.
Thus, nothing should stand in the way of Gregor Kobel, Thomas Meunier and Thorgan Hazard playing despite their early return from the national teams. Even with Manuel Akanji, who departed from the Swiss Nati due to adductor complaints, there is still hope that he will be fit for the game.
The same applies to Erling Haaland, whose muscular complaints have diminished after the short trip to Marbella, and Mahmoud Dahoud, who are expected to steadily increase their workload over the course of the week. Giovanni Reyna is also making progress and should be available to Rose again in the foreseeable future.
Another positive from Dortmund’s point of view was the relatively low amount of time some of the BVB’s internationals were used: Marco Reus did not appear in the DFB team’s 4-0 win in North Macedonia on Monday, while Donyell Malen was only substituted in the 78th minute of the Netherlands’ 6-0 win over Gibraltar and scored the final goal shortly afterwards. Marin Pongracic, who was called up for Croatia, made no appearance at all and was only on the bench against Slovakia (2:2) and Cyprus (3:0).
