At the end of a wildly contradictory night at the Westfalenstadion, Borussia Dortmund’s 1-1 draw with Lille told the story of a flawed team. Strong, even excellent in the first half, then alarmingly poor in the second, Dortmund now face a perilous second leg in France.
That was the evening’s headline. Its many contrasting themes, however, reflect Dortmund’s situation, and a curious struggle with identity.
Niko Kovac has been Dortmund’s head coach for just under two months after taking over from Nuri Sahin. Kovac has only lost two of his six games in charge — winning two and drawing two — and while progress has been gradual, there has been encouragement.
And there was plenty, too, during the first half against Lille, during which Dortmund played with commendable pragmatism. They built moves carefully and calmly, playing passes that suited the situation rather than the local mood, and were territorially dominant.
Kovac and Dortmund are a strange union. While his coaching ideology is predicated on organisation and hard work, his new club have long aspired to be more offensively stirring; to play football with more emotional flourishes.
But with a squad still needing a summer overhaul and several key players suffering through poor form, Kovac is a good candidate to lead a fragile group through their recovery period. Dortmund teams are not supposed to sit behind the ball, deny their opponents and build their attacking moves in slow, patient phases. That’s not the house style. Yet they are at their strongest when they do that.
Kovac surveys the scene against Lille (Christof Koepsel/Getty Images)
On Saturday, an excellent 2-0 away over St Pauli was built on those tenets — on sitting deep and springing forward at the right moments. But the more interesting detail, the tell which suggested that Kovac is having an impact on this group, was the work rate of the players.
The Croatian inherited a team that had made only the 14th most intensive runs among all Bundesliga clubs, the ninth most sprints and covered the 14th-furthest collective distance. Running statistics are not everything, but when Dortmund lost games, those rankings make it easy to portray passivity as indifference and to damn players for their refusal to grind their way through a difficult season.
But that tenor has been changing. St Pauli are among the hardest working teams in the Bundesliga, and yet Dortmund recorded 192 sprints to their 184, while Pascal Gross — at 33 — covered more distance (12.5km) than any other player on the pitch.
That uptick was no anomaly. When Dortmund defeated Sporting CP 3-0 in February’s Champions League play-off round, they outran the Portuguese side by 120.8km to 114.2km. Kovac is a taskmaster. He believes in teamwork and hard yards. Those wins, which depended on precisely those qualities, as well as rigid defending, sharp counter-attacking and a simplified passing game, were clearly performances suggestive of something taking root.
For 45 minutes against Lille, Dortmund were that team again — and they were extremely impressive.
Karim Adeyemi’s crisp half-volley was the highlight of the half, but the team functioned cohesively in all sorts of ways. They did not pass themselves into a muddle, as they often did under Sahin. Nor did they rush players forward into attack and make themselves vulnerable whenever they lost possession. Their approach was ordered and effective, and powered by a new energy without the ball.
Adeyemi fires the hosts ahead (Hendrik Deckers/Borussia Dortmund via Getty Images)
And then it was all gone.
Dortmund are 10th in the Bundesliga. Despite three consecutive clean sheets heading into Tuesday’s game, their confidence remains embryonic. Even so, the speed at which their systems disintegrated in the second half was startling and difficult to explain.
Was it habit? Perhaps. Lille equalised after 68 minutes, but even before Hakon Haraldsson dashed between Julian Ryerson and Nico Schlotterbeck to score, there had been warning signs. Instead of being cautious, Dortmund became fearful and passive. Their defensive line dropped by a few yards, as so often happens when a team does not fully trust itself to protect a lead.
It bred issues. Where in the first half passes out of the defensive third had been direct and switches of play had been flighted between the touchlines, in the second Dortmund started to overplay. It happened just once or twice to begin with, but then with enough regularity to bring the anxiety leaking from the stands, like so many other times this season.
And the rhythm of their football grew volatile. Dortmund started the game smartly, constructing conservative moves that allowed them territorial domination without creating much risk. It was mechanical, but in a good way. Their ball retention was dependable, too: 84 per cent pass completion at the break.
But as they sat deeper and the pressure intensified, the more muddled and elaborate Dortmund became. Their attacking moves became hurried and their combinations floundered, demanding a level of technical precision and chemistry that this team — in its current form, with its injuries and out of form playmakers — just does not have.
The pass completion in the second half? 71 per cent. Dortmund’s xG during that 45 minutes? 0.03.
Tensions mount as Dortmund’s game deteriorates (Bernd Thissen/picture alliance via Getty Images)
As the turnovers multiplied and communication became muddled, the frustrated gestures between team-mates began to reappear. The momentum vanished and the more desperately Dortmund tried to recapture it, the more elusive it became. It all felt very familiar.
Between Haraldsson’s goal and full-time, the hosts managed just one more shot, and that was a half-volley that Maximilian Beier hacked well over the bar from the edge of the box.
Given how effectively they had pinned Lille into their own defensive third, it was a baffling to see Dortmund shrink from the game so dramatically.
Or perhaps that misunderstands just how precarious a team’s revival is, or how long it takes for a new approach to become instinct. Maybe it underestimates just how fine the margins are at this level of the game, and how difficult it is to remain in full control of a Champions League knockout tie.
But that still feels generous. With no advantage to take to France, Dortmund have no time for these old habits or insecurities.
(Top photo: Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
