Borussia Dortmund coach Edin Terzic currently has a funny saying in his repertoire. If his footballers play along, he can repeat the saying for weeks. After two wins in the new year in Darmstadt and Cologne, Terzic said on Sunday before the home game against VfL Bochum: “There is something better than two wins in a row: three wins in a row.” Dortmund then won 3-1 thanks to three goals from Niclas Füllkrug, after which Terzic said, looking ahead to next Friday’s game in Heidenheim: “There is something better than three wins in a row: four wins in a row.”
Four wins, five wins, six wins – it is not impossible that the Dortmund footballers will turn this stair joke into a series of laughs in Heidenheim, against Freiburg and in Wolfsburg. The coach’s hunger for a winning streak is no coincidence: it was only a year ago that Terzic’s BVB came out of the winter break after a largely disappointing first half of the season and won eight Bundesliga games in a row. From the end of January to the beginning of March 2023, Dortmund gained nine points on league leaders Bayern Munich, and as we now know, they narrowly failed to become German champions at the end of that last season only because of a poorer goal difference.
However, Dortmund are not seriously concerned with the championship title after their current three wins in a row, because for this purpose it would probably be necessary for Terzic to be able to say in mid-May before the final match day: “There is something better than 17 wins in a row: 18 wins in a row.” But not even incorrigible optimists in Dortmund expect this.
Dortmund is still 13 points behind league leaders Leverkusen
At BVB, after the win against Bochum, they are happy that their team is back in fourth place in the table for the first time in two months. At least this would be required at the end of the season in order to qualify for the lucrative Champions League again. “We have to get into the Champions League,” said BVB sports director Sebastian Kehl unequivocally on Sunday. Anything else would be a bitter disappointment. Dortmund last qualified for the premier class eight years in a row, but, to paraphrase Terzic, there is of course something better than eight qualifications in a row: nine qualifications in a row.
Even after recently winning nine points from three games, Dortmund is still 13 points behind league leaders Bayer Leverkusen and eleven points behind second-placed Bayern Munich. On the other hand, Borussia gained six and nine points over their Champions League qualifying rivals VfB Stuttgart and RB Leipzig within three weekends. Leipzig (three defeats in a row) even overtook them on Sunday evening.
“It wasn’t an outstanding game, it wasn’t a perfect game,” said BVB coach Edin Terzic about Sunday’s win.
(Photo: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
Now the question is what a 3-0 win in Darmstadt, a 4-0 win in Cologne and a 3-1 win against Bochum are worth in perspective beyond the nine points. “It wasn’t an outstanding game, it wasn’t a perfect game,” Terzic said of Sunday’s win. “We still have to improve, we know that,” said midfielder Marcel Sabitzer. But the three-goal scorer Füllkrug was understandably full of endorphins when he said: “I don’t want to get hung up on negative thoughts, I think we should look at the positive things: after our problems at the end of the first half of the season, I’m very happy with it at the moment so that we can regain our self-confidence through victories.”
Niclas Füllkrug has already scored nine times this season
It took two penalties with Füllkrug in the 6th and 91st minutes to make it 1-0 and make it 3-1. In between, he brought his Dortmund team back to winning ways with a 2-1 header (72′), which they had temporarily abandoned after an own goal by Nico Schlotterbeck (1:1/45′). For Füllkrug, it was the 14th and 15th penalty in a row within five and a half years, and it was the third Bundesliga hat-trick of his career.
Füllkrug has increased his goal tally to nine this season and was cheekily asked after the game whether these three goals against Bochum were also an answer to Stuttgart’s Deniz Undav’s hat-trick the day before – in the long-distance duel for a striker nomination for the home team -European Championships in summer. But Füllkrug couldn’t laugh at this provocation. “I scored ten goals and two assists in thirteen games for the national team,” he answered very seriously and almost a little offended, “I don’t know what you’re looking for. Someone who scores 25 goals in 13 games? Find him you can’t do it in Germany.”
And so Füllkrug not only shoots his Dortmund team back into the Champions League zone for the time being, but also awakens a bit of German confidence for the European Championship with every goal. “We’re not at the limit yet, but we’re on the right track,” he said – but he was only referring to Borussia Dortmund. Füllkrug did not comment on Sunday about the national team’s chances in the summer.