The whole helplessness of the evening seemed to be written on Erling Haaland’s face. While the appendix from Ajax Amsterdam celebrated the final whistle of a 4-0 triumph with a full line-up and with the volume turned up, Borussia Dortmund’s Norwegians trudged towards the darkest place in the stadium, the small block with BVB fans. They looked petrified, while their hero Haaland was apparently quite close to tears, and he tried helplessly with the long arms that wanted to express solidarity. Four to zero, actually just a soccer result, but when you’re young it’s easy to believe you’ve just escaped an earthquake, but the city is in ruins.
On the bus ride from Amsterdam back to Dortmund, 220 kilometers and two and a half hours, it should have been as quiet as it has not been for a long time. The 0: 4 at the largest Champions League group competitor Ajax is, statistically speaking, the highest defeat BVB has ever conceded in the Champions League. But the way it went down was all the more devastating. Bare numbers often don’t tell everything about the difference in performance between two teams. But the game that Haaland and the thousands of Dortmund fans had experienced felt much worse than a typical clap.
Even if Erling Haaland could have hit two or three times himself: It felt like a total write-off. Even worse than the frequent high defeats at rivals FC Bayern in recent years. To get four or five from Bayern on a bad day, Dortmund’s soccer folk has got used to it, but at least one big fight usually succeeds against the series champions Munich. That evening at the Johan Cruyff Stadium, the feeling of humiliation remained.
Dortmund coach Marco Rose was not to be envied to have to comment on the football debacle afterwards, because the lucrative contracts with television broadcasters demand that. “Even after the 2-0 draw, our body language was as if we were already 4-0 down,” said Rose, capturing his most important impression, and succeeded in making a remarkably good sentence. Still, Rose was only describing the observation. That didn’t explain why Rose’s team let themselves be dismantled so downright after ten good opening minutes. And even more so Rose couldn’t analyze why the almost collective despair happens to the Dortmunders again and again. For years, in all kinds of competitions, no matter which coach. Rose has just been on the Dortmund line for a few months, but the “Constance”, which is so often invoked in Dortmund for good reason, looks as if it is disappearing into the distance.
Roses opposite Erik ten Hag, years ago coach of the second team at Bayern, could speak very differently. “It was an open exchange that we won. We played a great game.” Ten Hag deserved the exuberance. After a rather wait-and-see phase, his team almost always looked as if they were playing in the majority, with a clear layout of the rooms and a dreamlike, secure grip in duel situations. In possession of the ball, ten Hag’s team demonstrated a ball security that can also be said of Roses Borussen – just not that evening, and obviously not predictable and always. And so Amsterdam not only seemed so much faster in the head and on the feet, it also seemed to have a much clearer plan of how to crack the opponent.
Ajax performs exactly what Dortmund always thinks it likes to be
“We made too many mistakes in the last third,” said Rose, “we should have played that much better. There was too little movement in the last third, so Ajax showed us something.” Too bad that the experts have been accusing BVB of the lack of precision and lack of determination in their own attack for weeks. Only that it always went well against opponents like Augsburg or Mainz, while Ajax actually performed exactly what Dortmund always thinks they like to be: A great talent shed with some great old warriors.
Dortmund’s often-vaunted youthfulness, with which the drop in performance can usually be explained, was not necessarily reflected in the player’s passes that evening. Marco Reus, for example, played a part in the beginning of the end when, in the eleventh minute, a cross in his own penalty area slipped over his head, unhappy but avoidable, so that he deflected the ball into his own goal to make it 1-0. “That mustn’t happen to me, I calculated the ball completely wrong,” said Reus afterwards manly and contrite. But Reus was largely paralyzed for the rest of the game after that.
The experienced Mats Hummels, who later had to be replaced because of his ongoing knee problems, had not had a good day either. It was no different for Axel Witsel, Emre Can, Thomas Meunier, Nico Schulz – all seasoned types between their mid-twenties and early thirties who perished in the storm of attacks in Amsterdam without much resistance. Nothing new in Dortmund. I’ve seen everything. But against Amsterdam of all places, a team whose football philosophy seems to be so similar, to go in that way, was shocking.
Erling Haaland, 21, who is usually talked about in connection with exit clauses and windy player advisors, instinctively found his way to coping with pain. Dortmund will play for Arminia Bielefeld on Saturday. By then they should have displaced all the complexes of the evening in Amsterdam. Ousting is everything you can do in the middle of an endurance run of games and English weeks. In just under two weeks, the second leg against Ajax in Dortmund is due. That BVB will be able to deal with the Dutch as they did with the Borussia in Amsterdam should remain a pipe dream. First place in the Champions League group should be lost. From now on it’s probably only about second place, i.e. the round of 16, in the duel with Sporting Lisbon. The Portuguese won 4-1 in Istanbul on Tuesday. Not good news for Dortmund residents either.