Champions League
BVB longs for Wembley
Mats Hummels (l) in a duel with PSG striker Kylian Mbappé. photo
© Bernd Thissen/dpa
Shortly before the end of the poor Bundesliga season, BVB has a historic opportunity. The Champions League final is just one step away. The success in the first leg is encouraging for Paris.
Suffering for London: The whole of Dortmund dreams of a return to Wembley and the German Champions League final against FC Bayern. With all due respect to the difficult semi-final second leg on Tuesday (9 p.m./Amazon Prime Video). Paris Saint-Germain is dominated by anticipation. “For me it’s the biggest game of my career,” enthused defender Nico Schlotterbeck.
Encouraged by the 1-0 win in the first duel with the French, Marco Reus, who left at the end of the season, set the tone. “We’re going into the game with a lead and have to play like men,” demanded the veteran. After more than 21 years in the black and yellow jersey, he longs for a fairytale career showdown: “We want to bring the pot to Dortmund.” In 2013, FC Bayern prevented this with a 2-1 win over BVB in the final at Wembley Stadium.
His teammates and the coaching team would love to give the Dortmund cult figure a glorious farewell. “It would come full circle. He was at Wembley in his first season with Borussia Dortmund. And that would be the perfect setting to go there again,” said head coach Edin Terzić.
Borussia already felt how difficult the task at the Parc des Princes can be in the group phase, when they were well served with a 0-2 defeat at the same venue. But with recent exhilarating performances on the European stage, Schlotterbeck believes that resilience has grown – and the belief: “If we don’t appear as anxious as we did in the group phase in Paris, we also have a chance of progressing.”
First leg as a blueprint
The courageous performance in the first leg serves as a blueprint for the tricky task. At least in the first half, the French champions’ miracle storm of stars like Kylian Mbappé and former Dortmund player Ousmane Dembélé had no chance of scoring. In the end, the fact that BVB was the only team so far this Champions League season to not concede a goal against Paris also had to do with luck.
BVB will probably need this fortune in Paris too. “You can’t take them out for over 90 minutes, they are exceptional players. They will have more chances than in the first leg,” predicted Schlotterbeck.
Kehl: “We will have to suffer”
Like the 24-year-old central defender, Dortmund’s sporting director Sebastian Kehl also expects coach Luis Enrique’s team to storm: “They expect to sort things out against us at home. We will have to suffer and need one of our best performances to survive. ” The sports director is in good spirits that it won’t be as one-sided as it was in the 2-0 defeat last September: “It’s going to be a very tight game. PSG has respect – we’ve earned that.”
He is hoping for a final against FC Bayern, who will face Real Madrid in the semi-finals a day later and are under more pressure after the 2-2 draw in the first leg. “I would like nothing more than to play this final again. That would be great for the Bundesliga, for Germany and also for the clubs,” said the sports director on Welt-TV.
More goals from Niclas Füllkrug could help pave the way to the final on June 1st in London. The international striker is brimming with self-confidence after his goals in the quarter-finals against Atlético Madrid and in the first leg against Paris and has little desire for a purely defensive orientation: “We will also try to play our football and not just keep a 0-0 draw over time .”
Free play for Paris
It’s just a good thing that BVB benefited from this year’s special regulation and completed their qualification for the Champions League via the UEFA annual rankings with a 1-0 win against Paris six days earlier. That’s why coach Terzić had the luxury of rotating ten outfield players from the starting eleven for Saturday’s league game against Augsburg (5-1). This deprived the French, who had postponed their game against Nice, of a supposed advantage. “They used the weekend to train. We used the weekend to gather a lot of emotions, euphoria and energy. We will be well prepared,” said Kehl.