No landing for Borussia

29 seconds can make the difference: When our team returned from Nuremberg to Dortmund- or better tried to return to Dortmund- the Airport Dortmund closed a few seconds before the plane would have arrived. The consequence was flying to Paderborn and returning from there by bus. Surely this is annoying for the team, but it underlines just the fact that there is absolutely no landing on the ground for Borussia Dortmund.

But before flying back to Dortmund the team that dominates the Bundesliga week by week had to play against Nuremberg, a team with some very talented young players. Compared to struggling against relegation after the last season Nuremberg did pretty well in this half season.
Borussia Dortmunds team was changed on two positions compared to the team that won against Mönchengladbach on the past matchday: Kevin Großkreutz played as well from the beginning as Robert Lewandowski who replaced the injured top- striker Lucas Barrios. Kuba had to arrange himself with being a substitute again.

After choreographies from both the Nuremberg and the Dortmund fans the match started. It's hard to find words that correctly describe the starting phase of the match because much happened but nothing was consequent enough. So it isn't really surprising that the first real chance was in the 20th minute when FCN striker Schieber tried to head the ball into our goal after a free kick but missed it. In the 23rd minute Nuri Sahin and Mats Hummels did their best to show Nuremberg how it's done: Mats ran behind Nurembergs defensive leader and team captain Wolf and was alone in front of the opposing keeper when Nuris free kick entered the penalty area so that he could strike the goal easily.

Our yellow- black football superpower went on and in the following minutes Kagawa Shinji, Lewandowski and „Dortmunder Jung“ Kevin Großkreutz had their opportunities to strike the 0:2, no resistance from the club whose fans are friends with the heap of ruins from Gelsenkirchen. It took Nuremberg more than 15 minutes to find back into the match, but a shot from 16 meters distance could be saved by Weidenfeller.

3 minutes after change of ends it was again Nuri Sahin who shot a free kick into Nurembergs penalty area. The „Glubb“ players were horribly weak after standard situations and so Hummels had another opportunity to score the 0:2 for the leading team of the Bundesliga, but he missed it. But suddenly in the 54th minute it was Schieber who had the chance to tie the score after a well- played solo but when he passed in direction to the penalty spot it was international Marcel Schmelzer who cleared the situation.

The game lost its drive in the following 15 minutes so that the next real occasion from the now dominating team of Jürgen Klopp took place in the 73rd minute when Nurembergs goalkeeper Schäfer prove his class when he saved with his left foot against Lewandowski who shot after a pass from Götze.

Several more opportunities went by unused, but when Nuremberg tried to attack in the 88th minute our defensive midfield was careful so that they could strike back. Again a nice combination demonstrated by Nuri and Mario Götze who did a tremendous job when he was attacked at the left side and didn't fell down but played on. The following pass reached da Silva and he gave it to Nuri and after a Billard- scene it was Lewandowski who turned around and shot the ball unreachable for Schäfer into the right- bottom corner- 0:2 and the assurance to win the 8th out of 8 away matches.

All in all the match against Nuremberg was not as dominating as several matches before have been, but Dortmund was always present and even in dangerous situations the defenders including Weidenfeller did a very good job so that the leading team truly deserved to extend the gap between us and Mainz and Leverkusen to 10/11 points. Side fact: 40 points have always been enough to stay in Bundesliga 1!

Statistics

FC Nuremberg: Schäfer – Judt, Maroh, Wolf, Plattenhardt – Simons – Hegeler, Cohen, Gündogan, Mak – Schieber

Borussia "40 points" Dortmund: Weidenfeller – Pisczek, Subotic, Hummels, Schmelzer – Bender , Sahin – Götze, Kagawa, Großkreutz – Lewandowski.

Substitutions: Ekici for Judt (68.), Eigler for Mak (75.), Mendler for Cohen (83.) - Kuba for Großkreutz (61.), da Silva for Kagawa (85.), Santana for Sahin (90.)

Goals: 0:1 Hummels (23.), 0:2 Lewandowski (88.)

Corners: 3:6

Referee: Weiner

Attendance: 48548 (sold out)

Zar'roc, 06.12.2010