Six points. The gap between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund is now six points, with fourteen games remaining in the season. In a vacuum, if the names of the clubs were hidden and only the point totals were compared, would you call it a title race? A lot can happen over fourteen games. Dortmund might be on the outside edge as they thunder into the stretch, but stranger things have happened than a team overcoming a six-point gap with fourteen games remaining.
If Dortmund do indeed pull off such
a miraculous comeback, they’ll need many things to go their way. They’ll need to win all the games they deserve to win, as well as most that they don’t. Whether Dortmund deserved to win today could be up for debate. Certainly, a narrow 3-2 win at home against the team that’s dead last in the Bundesliga, in which said team led 2-1 at one point and generated 2.3 expected goals, and in which your star striker missed a penalty, doesn’t feel like the caliber of performance that features heavily in DVD compilations of title-winning teams.
But deservedly or not they did win it, and in doing so narrowed the gap at the top to six points. For a team so narrow in depth and with a lineup so bereft of star talent, there are worse places to be. There will be many challenges ahead, and I’m sure a few more results like these will need to go their way. Let’s see what this team is made of.
Here are my thoughts on today’s game:
Serhou Guirassy Leads the Way
If BVB are gonna make a run for glory, Serhou Guirassy is going to need to be good. Really good. Today, he missed a penalty. It was a bad attempt. The attempt’s particular badness came at a quite unfortunate time, when it could have put Dortmund up by two goals, putting a comeback decidedly out of reach for Heidenheim. It was a mistake, and I’m sure Guirassy won’t be on corners for the foreseeable future, especially once Emre Can returns to good health.
However, the reaction I’m seeing from fans, many of whom seem to want to ship him off before the window ends, is a little overboard, because he also scored two other goals directly, and contributed to the other. His goal from open play was a textbook striker’s finish from an acute angle, that not many other players could pull off. He almost scored again when he chipped a ball off the crossbar. More importantly, there’s not a single other player on the squad who can do what he does. As dynamic as Fabio Silva has proven, and as skilled as Karim Adeyemi and Maxi Beier can be, only Guirassy is the type of player who will routinely get himself into such areas and get shots off.
Guirassy has been a frustrating player this season. At times, he has seemed off the pace. He has not been scoring or shooting at the level he once did. However, if Dortmund are going to chase down Bayern Munich by some miracle, then they will need Guirassy to play like he did today. That being said, maybe someone else should be on pens.
BVB’s Defensive “Adventures”
The first Heidenheim goal was simply unfortunate. Filippo Mane was doing everything right, tracking his man along the right side, when his hamstring simply snapped. Mathias Honsak was able to jog into the box unmarked while Mane lay prone in agony, clutching his leg. His cross found Julian Niehues, who was able to pounce on his own rebound before Daniel Svensson could get to it. While Svensson could have blocked the shot better, the whole situation only developed because of an incredibly untimely injury. There’s no way that Dortmund could have accounted for that.
Unfortunately, because of the injury to Mane, who I thought was having another solid game, Niko Kovac needed to sub on Niklas Süle in his place. Süle would come on at the half, and almost immediately would contribute to a conceded goal. Heidenheim attacker Arijon Ibrahimovic charged towards goal. Waldemar Anton lunged in and missed completely, with Ibrahimovic effortlessly gliding by him, before Süle was caught with his feet planted like a traffic cone. Ibrahimovic played the cutback all the way to the top of the box, where Nieuhues was there to blast the ball past Gregor Kobel, with a deflection from Daniel Svensson helping it along the way.
There were other chances for the visitors, too, but Dortmund were fortunate not to concede more. Marvin Pieringer had an open header off a corner, but it floated harmlessly over the net. In the dying minutes of the game, Jan Schöppner looped another header over the bar. In the first half, Eren Dinkci had an open shot right on the penalty spot after a clearance by Schlotterbeck fell right to him, but thankfully Gregor Kobel made the save. I put that one mostly on Nmecha, who was maybe doing a little bit of ball-watching:
So Dortmund had a few breakdowns, especially in set pieces towards the end of the game. It was very shaky, and they will need to be much better, but overall the club’s defensive record has been very good this season. I’m not too worried about one bad game, even if it came against an opponent that Dortmund should be beating handily, and in which the lineup was uprooted by an injury mid-game. Let’s see how things go against Wolfsburg, when Emre Can and/or Ramy Bensebaini will be back in the lineup, before we start to lose our heads.
Your Thoughts
Am I being too forgiving? Let me know your thoughts!
