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BVB central defender Mats Hummels: "a lot of nonsensical football"
Photo:
Bernd Thissen / dpa
The reckoning culminated in an accusation that continues to have an impact.
"We play a lot of nonsensical football, illogical football, and that makes the opponent unnecessarily strong," complained Mats Hummels.
The Dortmund central defender's TV interview only lasted about 90 seconds, but he talked his team to the ground after the 4-2 win in the Europa League first leg against Glasgow Rangers on Thursday evening.
The main accusation of the 33-year-old was: If you play so naively, so immaturely, you cannot be successful in the long run.
No matter what demands he places on himself.
And they are high at BVB.
Managing Director Hans-Joachim Watzke, for example, had set the goal of winning the Europa League.
"It's more than clear to me what the problem is with us," said Hummels.
In the 5-2 draw against Leverkusen ten days ago in the Bundesliga, his team would have conceded four goals after losing the ball slightly.
Well, against the actually staid Scots, the simple handing over of the game equipment was again to blame for three of the four goals conceded.
"The big headline for us is: serious, success-oriented football," said Hummels.
“We play far too complicated football here.
This is how you win, this is how you lose, you will never be successful in the long term.«
The impression that BVB is in danger of failing in the play-offs for the round of 16 of the Europa League because it made careless mistakes was initially given.
Before the Scots scored their fourth goal, the 17-year-old Youssoufa Moukoko lost the ball while dribbling in his own half.
Left-back Raphaël Guerreiro dribbled before the two goals, each of which resulted in a 2-0 deficit at the break from corner kicks.
However: After the first corner kick, central defender Dan-Axel Zagadou jumped the ball in his hand.
That may have been bad luck.
Before the corner kick to make it 2-0, however, Dortmund were 8-5 in the penalty area, captain Marco Reus refused to head the ball on the first post, and Julian Brandt allowed himself a time-out on the second post.
It is therefore not enough to blame ball losses alone for Rangers' goals.
Even the absence of the best Dortmund player, star striker Erling Haaland, is not a sufficient explanation.
Hummels did not say that Glasgow's Ryan Kent was able to easily dribble past right-back Manuel Akanji and Hummels himself before the 3-1 lead.
In his fundamental criticism, the 2014 world champion explicitly excluded his coach Marco Rose: "He often addresses it, but we don't implement it," said Hummels.
And yet the combination of BVB's weak performance again and this unusually harsh criticism of their own colleagues by Hummels creates a devastating picture of a team that is supposed to be so many things, but which so often disappoints.
And that ultimately affects Marco Rose.
33 games under Rose, 12 losses
The 45-year-old has now played 33 competitive games with Dortmund.
Twelve of them were lost, including games in the Champions League against Sporting Lisbon and in the DFB Cup at second division FC St. Pauli.
And now this sobering evening against Glasgow.
Rangers had only scored two goals away from home in the Europa League group stage.
Against BVB it was four out of just five shots on target.
The Rangers defeated the ambitious BVB with a man coverage in midfield.
"I think I can basically get through to the guys," Rose said when asked if he was starting to get confused.
»We're talking about it, I see nodding heads.
But our topic is always implementation.
And I'm responsible for that, too."
Dortmund seemed helpless, Rose's attempts to improve the starting situation were astonishing.
The young Moukoko and Steffen Tigges, who oscillated between the 3rd division and the first team, should set things right in the storm in the last 25 minutes. Immediately after Guerreiro made it 4-2 in the 82nd minute, the coach took Captain Reus off the field and brought him on 20-year-old Brazilian Reinier, who stands out in Dortmund because he has never been noticed positively.
Thorgan Hazard, who was left out of the squad for the Union game due to poor training performance, sat on the bench for 90 minutes.
Rose saw the main reason for the defeat not only in the turnover.
"We also didn't do enough beforehand to give the game the direction you would expect from a home game.
Not only the defensive, but also the offensive is an issue.« His team would have had »not enough power forward«.
Only then did the Rangers come into play at all.
Haaland could be missing for a longer time
But the coach didn't have any bigger explanations for BVB's strange ambivalence between bad performances like against Glasgow and strong ones like the 3-0 win against Union Berlin on Sunday.
"If I had the explanation now, I would run into the dressing room and take it to the crew."
The duel with his former club Borussia Mönchengladbach awaits Rose on Sunday.
Haaland will probably still be missing, and Rose didn't even want to predict a game against Rangers in the second leg next Thursday.
The center forward's muscle injury is "a bit of a stubborn story," said the coach.
That applies to so many problems at Borussia.
