Status: 05.12.2021 8:31 a.m.
The top game in the Bundesliga will be a spectacular duel because both coaches wanted it. With aggressive pressing and offensive force, Borussia Dortmund and FC Bayern cover their defensive weaknesses.
Marco Rose has internalized the simple calculation that a win and a defeat from two games bring more points than two draws. He has now played four of 14 Bundesliga games Borussia Dortmund lost, that’s as many defeats as Eintracht Frankfurt shows in 13th place in the table.
But BVB just won the other ten games, and that’s why they still have loose contact with the top of the table even after the defeat against FC Bayern.
Rose: “Open visor”
All efforts not to talk so much about the questionable decisions made by referee Felix Zwayer were in vain. Rose, who was sent to the stands with a yellow-red card and thus banned for the next game at VfL Bochum, complained that he had not received a “clear penalty” after allegedly fouling Marco Reus, and he complained even more violently that Bayern would ultimately win Mats Hummels got a decisive penalty after a handball.
But then there was a little bit of talk about football, and Rose needed two words to describe the game perfectly – “open visor”.
Nagelsmann: “More balls won than given”
His colleague Julian Nagelsmann only put this tactic, which he had chosen, into different words. When asked whether it was not risky to position Alphonso Davies in particular on the left side of midfield so far in front of the back three, the Bayern coach said somewhat evasively: “We won significantly more balls thanks to the high defense as submitted. “
All in all, that will be true, but the price could have been significantly higher. Even before the 1-0, which Julian Brandt scored in the fifth minute, BVB had two good opportunities to get in front of Manuel Neuer goal after winning the ball through a quick counterattack.
“We had incredible spaces in front”
Marco Reus said on “Sky”: “We had incredible spaces up front in the first half and didn’t use them.” Like 15,000 spectators in the stadium, Dortmund’s captain had seen an “incredibly wild and awesome game”.
With a rate of less than 80 percent of passports arrived, the Dortmunders were about five percentage points below their average, just like the Bavarians, who on Saturday (December 4th, 2021) – without their painfully missed strategist Joshua Kimmich – came to just over 80 percent.
Schweinsteiger sees the predicted “many individual errors”
Aggressive pressing, which bothers the opponent while building up in their own penalty area, was the requirement of both coaches. Something like that is stressful at the highest level, and it provokes what the sports show expert expected. According to Bastian Schweinsteiger, he saw “a lot of individual mistakes,” as he predicted.
Two central defenders, Mats Hummels on Dortmund’s side and Dayot Upamecano at Bayern, were particularly vulnerable. The Munich man must be credited with the fact that Nagelsmann’s risky tactics often brought him into trouble.
Bayern were often poorly positioned in what is known as residual defense, i.e. the players who are closer to their own goal than the ball. This is particularly risky against an Erling Haaland, who reaches a top speed of more than 35 kilometers per hour in his sprints.
A moment without concentration
Dortmund was fundamentally more secure. In front of a back four, sometimes even three players condensed the center.
The sequence before the 1: 2 showed that a nominal outnumbered can quickly become a minority if concentration is lost for a moment. When Corentin Tolisso shifted the game from the center line to the left side to Davies, BVB still looked very well positioned. But several Bavarians sprinted forward at the same time, so that because of sleepy Dortmund there was a numerical ratio in favor of Munich.
The fact that goalscorer Kingsley Coman got the ball at his feet after Raphaël Guerreiro shot his colleague Hummels may have been happy. But Bayern were at the time with five players in the penalty area, Leroy Sané was just in front of the center to take a rebound.
The risk of running into a counterattack with a cleanly cleared ball from Guerreiro was high. Nagelsmann accepts something like that. This risk can also be read indirectly from the table. The front runner has lost more than once this season when he played a draw.
Source: sportschau.de