And just like that, Bayern Munich are on top of the Bundesliga again. Frequent second place challengers Borussia Dortmund rode into Bavaria on a hot streak, trying to take advantage of the tumult of last week’s shock manager change in Munich, but have emerged once again having been done and thoroughly dusted.
Dortmund player and coach reactions were captured by FCBayern.com.
“We started well and then concede a silly goal,” captain Marco Reus lamented. “You have to dust yourselves down first and then you concede the next one from a set piece. Then we’re 2-0 down and it’s even harder to come back. In the end, the scoreline doesn’t lie. We deserved to lose… The way we acted in a lot of situations was lousy. We fell into a lot of counters, which is actually unlike us. Bayern used them well and should’ve even scored one or two more goals. It’s not a good night for us.”
Though the Black and Yellows started as bravely as any team against Bayern — a good formula that’s led to numerous occasions of dropped points this season — a horror of a howler by keeper Gregor Kobel led to a prompt unraveling.
“There are just bad days and today was one of them. It hurts a lot… it’ll take a few days but nevertheless we move on,” Kobel said after the game.
Head coach Edin Terzić stood up in support.
“We know we can regularly rely on Gregor, and we will do in the future. He’s obviously hurting,” Terzić said. “It would be frivolous for me to say that we played well in the first 15 minutes. We just took too long to react to the setbacks and shake them off. That’s how it was 3-0 after 22 minutes. We tried again in the second half to change things. It hurts and we’ll get on the plane very disappointed. We had high hopes.”
For the team about which Bayern board member Uli Hoeneß cracked “second place confirmed” before the start of the season, it’s another bitter pill in a series of nightmares spanning many, many seasons. Whenever they fly close to glory, they seem to fall apart, as if like Icarus they’d yearned too close to the sun. GGFN’s Reece Edwards caught onto a nugget from Bayern forward Thomas Müller’s post-game press conference, alluding to the BVB players’ visibly flagging spirits once the first goal had been netted not fifteen minutes into the match:
Müller is likely referring to his post-game conversations with Dortmund players, many of them his friends and international teammates. Still, the lack of reaction when the chips are down is an all-too-familiar nightmare for Dortmund — and stands in stark contrast to the mettle they showed at home in the reverse fixture, when they managed a last-gasp comeback to level the score on Bayern.
For now, the sun is shining in Bavaria again. Bayern are only two points clear, but have the distinct air of champions already galloping away from the field. For the umpteenth straight time, Dortmund couldn’t put together even close to a competitive display when it really mattered. Their record against Bayern, especially at the Allianz, is too dismal to mention.
BuLi News captured Dortmund coach Terzić’s mood even more grimly.
“It is what it is and it’s shit. Total shit how we behaved in many situations,” Terzić said. “We took too long to react to the setbacks and couldn’t shake them off. We’ll be boarding the plane home very disappointed. It hurts. It hurts a lot.”
Interested in a more in-depth look at the game? Curious about why Thomas Tuchel chose a 4-2-3-1? How did it differ from Nagelsmann’s Bayern? We talk about all that and more in our postgame podcast. Listen to it below or at this link.
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