Two game days, one cup, one Bundesliga, and you don’t have to be an expert in the world of drawn comics to ask yourself: What magic potion did Erling Haaland fall into as a child? A start, apparently no matter which zone of the playing field, and you can see Asterix and Obelix in your mind’s eye, wrapped in a small cloud of dust, rolling through the phalanx of the legionnaires, and left and right the Romans just fly through the air. The Eintracht Frankfurt players must have felt something like that at 5-2. Except that Haaland does it alone. Dortmund’s Norwegian is 21 years young, has now scored an incredible 62 goals in 61 competitive games, and you gradually have to realize that he is just redefining the entire position of the center forward with his incredible force.
Last Saturday, Haaland had apparently only a little in the mood with three goals in the cup game at third division club Wehen Wiesbaden. On this Saturday, at the start of the Bundesliga, for the first time in front of 25,000 spectators in the almost one-third full stadium, Dortmund’s striker really got serious. This time he scored two goals himself, three times he finished his tempo runs through the Frankfurt Romans with fine plays on Marco Reus, Thorgan Hazard and Gio Reyna, who then shot the ball into the goal.
“It’s an incredible package,” says BVB colleague Marco Reus
No wonder that Haaland, who loves small and large shows, presented himself to the long-missing masses after the game like a gladiator, to stay with the Roman. The reduced audience was predominantly selected from the season ticket holders according to the criteria vaccinated or recovered. But the rocking chants from “Öööörling” on one side and “Haaaaland” on the other side of the stadium already worked quite well. As in general, the expectations of the fans break through in collective excited moans when Haaland storms the center line with the ball at his foot. There was already something similar with the fast predecessor Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, but the former BVB goalscorer was mainly fast. Haaland breaks out like a one-man avalanche every time, and you immediately suspect the worst for the opposing defense.
How long Haaland can rage through a season at this energy level is of course not yet known. Marco Reus, who is so completely different from Haaland in his filigree, elegant way, but contributed almost as much to the success of Dortmund, only said afterwards: “It is an unbelievable package.” What should you say if you don’t want to let the young man, who is already bursting with self-confidence, finally go crazy.
Marco Rose, Dortmund’s new coach, was clearly keen to emphasize the team’s usefulness of his center forward: “The way Erling runs and plows for the team and his teammates, that makes him just as important as his goals.” However, it shouldn’t be that easy to keep the high-flyer halfway on the ground. And then there would still be the question of whether you want to do that at all, or whether you just let him do it.
Rose did not praise himself, although he has clearly managed to continue the renovation work of his interim predecessor Edin Terzic. Perhaps BVB will sometimes have to regulate the switching speed a little after winning the ball and divide the pressing more economically. But at least one has the impression that Borussia Dortmund now has a coach who is not in diametrical contradiction to the composition of the squad, as one had to observe in the two and a half years at Lucien Favre. Rose said the clever sentence on Saturday: “I don’t have the impression that this club is constantly yearning to go back to the times under Jürgen Klopp, but that we want to develop something new here together.”
The first location determination is at the Supercup against Bayern in Munich
The fact that Rose and especially Haaland still remember the glorious times under Klopp does not have to be a disadvantage when it comes to euphoria. The Frankfurters, whose defensive often did not get physical access to Haaland and only looked for the hook from Reus, benefited in the first half from an unlucky own goal by Felix Passlack. In the second half, however, the Dortmund defensive proved to be vulnerable, admittedly without half a dozen regulars like Mats Hummels. Even against the long-intimidated Frankfurters. The Norwegian Jan-Petter Hauge, a good friend of Haaland, even scored the second Eintracht goal. Typically according to a standard, the permanent problem child of Rose’s predecessors Favre and Terzic.
Stefan Ilsanker, Eintracht’s head of defense, who won 2-1 in Dortmund last April, tried to give first aid right after the game: “We played against Dortmund and Haaland today. Other opponents will also come.” However, coach Oliver Glasner, who came from Wolfsburg, now has to work off a rub off in Dortmund after the cup elimination against third division team Waldhof Mannheim.
On Tuesday it will be really serious for the cup winners BVB, in the Supercup game against champions FC Bayern. “About second and third place,” said Marco Reus cheerfully after the game, “you don’t have to talk big in Dortmund, with the audience and our history.” That should mean: There is an initial assessment of the situation in Munich. It is unlikely that the Romans will fly in such high arcs as they did at Frankfurt against Haaland.