In the end, it felt like a hard punch in the stomach: Borussia Dortmund also lost their second group match against Ajax Amsterdam – after a passionate fight in a long period of being outnumbered due to an unjustified red card. Despite the 3-1 defeat and another injured player, BVB coach Marco Rose does not fear a blow to morale.
Marco Rose still had anger written all over his face – and who could blame him given the course of the game the BVB coach had previously experienced on the sidelines. His team had started strongly in the second group match against Ajax and was well on the way to following up the bitter 4-0 defeat in Amsterdam with a strong response. Then an unjustified sending-off for defender Mats Hummels in the 29th minute changed the course of the match. Dortmund did take the lead shortly afterwards through a penalty kick converted by Marco Reus. But in the end, after 60 minutes of being shorthanded and an injury to Marius Wolf, the resistance was not enough.
Courage, commitment and determination – but the fight was not rewarded
After equalising in the 72nd minute, Ajax added two more goals to give Borussia a final place in the last 16 in Lisbon (24 November). It could hardly have been more bitter. And the Borussians, who were pawed by their own crowd with encouraging applause and chants after the final whistle, had little to reproach themselves for. Courage, commitment, determination – everything that had been lacking in Amsterdam was there this time. But the fight went unrewarded. Which in turn led to the question of whether this defeat, which was particularly tough in its own way, could be a blow to Borussia ahead of the Bundesliga top game at RB Leipzig on Saturday.
Rose, of course, denied this question. He said the team would sleep on the game, “possibly not quite as well”, then come together again, regenerate and then prepare for the “difficult game” in Leipzig, where they would again “send eleven guys out onto the field who will dig in”. The 45-year-old said he did not believe that Wednesday night’s game would “in any way affect our confidence or that it would give us a knock.
A reliable answer to this question will probably only be found in a few weeks, however, because the low blows Borussia is currently conceding are piling up. The personnel situation in particular is now taking on dramatic features. Against Amsterdam, not only was exceptional striker Erling Haaland absent, who was watching intensively from a box and probably burned as many calories as he did when he was on duty. BVB also had to do without Raphael Guerreiro, Emre Can, Mahmoud Dahoud, Giovanni Reyna, Nico Schulz and Mateu Morey. Therefore, right-footed Marius Wolf – “our third left-back”, as Rose noted – started on the left of the back four.
Wolf has to come off – Antony turns up
Wolf, who has been one of the positives this season due to his versatility and tireless commitment, did his job well against Amsterdam’s top player Antony. Only once – before the red card for Hummels – had the Brazilian slipped away from him. But after a long sprint in the 57th minute, Wolf went down without making contact with his opponent. The medics immediately rushed over, bandaged his thigh and gave the signal for substitution. The next muscle injury, the next – probably weeks-long – absence. And at the same time the signal for Antony to turn up the heat. The 21-year-old initiated all three Ajax goals in the final phase after Wolf was no longer on the pitch.
“Marius had a knock on his thigh from the last game. Today we then had to play for a long time outnumbered,” said Rose, whose comments preempted the question of where the accumulation of muscle injuries at BVB originated. Wolf had “eaten well, slept well, trained well”. But: “At some point it’s just too much. We have to get through that. “
Borussia has one more game – the one in Leipzig – to get through in its current configuration before it goes into the international break and then, in the best case scenario, has a few more options at its disposal. The fact that RB was knocked out of the Champions League on Wednesday was therefore of little interest to Dortmund. They had too much to do with themselves after this exhausting and nerve-racking evening in the top flight.
