Bundesliga seems just an imposition in a CL week

Once more Borussia was unable to concentrate on Bundesliga before an important Champions League match and once more we helped a team in crisis to recover. The Westfalenstadion was shocked by another home defeat as the ponies from the lower Rhine steal a 1:2 with the help of ref Deniz Aytekin.

Jonas Hofmann demonstrated the priorities of our team best, when he let the world know via Facebook on Sunday “Shitty defeat yesterday, but now it’s CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!!!!!!!!!!!!”. That sums it up pretty perfectly. With St. Petersburg on their minds, the Borussians wanted to win the match en passant, a match plan was never identifiable. But Bundesliga does not work like that. Apart from the seemingly undefeatable Buyern pretty much everybody has the chance to beat everybody else. And Jonas Hofmann was the perfect example for the attitude of the team. He made the starting eleven for the first time in this season, but he never gave the impression that he was eager to take the chance on the important COM-position. Of course you can’t expect Hofmann to be able to step in for players like Mkhitaryan or Reus with no recognizable loss of quality. But I expected to see a player willing to take the chance to make a lasting impression in full 90 minutes. But Hofmann was hardly visible for most of the time and when he had the ball he could not show the agility and intuition that made him a valuable alternative for the last 15 minutes in many matches.

But it would be wrong to pin the defeat on Hofmann alone. There are others with more experience than him who looked even worse. Schmelzer seemed completely out of shape. He could never stop Hermann pacing down his wing and his attempts in offence are way below Bundesliga standards. Nuri Sahin was unable to organize our midfield and Robert Lewandowski kept up a gentle jog for most of the match. In the end it was hard to believe that the black’n’yellows had once more outrun the rest of the league. But that only shows that running around aimlessly is not the essence of good football. It was frustrating to see the Westfalentemple, once a fortress, crumble again. A big share in our defeat had goalie Roman Weidenfeller. The first goal by Raffael was hard to stop for him, but still he looked bad, because the shot wobbled over the line while Weidenfeller went down at the pace of a railway gate. But the 0:1 might have been repairable, if Weidenfeller had not produced another blackout a few minutes later. What went on in his head, when he left the line although Lukasz Piszczek was covering Kruse in the box, is beyond me. He made it easy for Kruse to get rid of both of them with one little body swerve and score into the empty goal.

In half two things did not get better at first until Nordtveit had his special minute. First he collected yellow for kicking the ball away in frustration after a foul and then he hacked down Ducksch within seconds and got served with a well-deserved 2^nd booking. In those last 20 minutes BVB started to fight. The Westfalenstadion roar by the outraged supporters seemed to wake up the team. But it was too little, too late. Only super-sub Jojic managed to score with a shot that was luckily deflected. Ref Deniz Aytekin seemed as if he wanted to make up for the sending-off and so he would not give a penalty to BVB after a Ducksch shot was saved by Daems with a reflex ter Steegen would be proud of. The equalizer by Ducksch was also whistled off, because Lewandowski touched ter Steegen and he made the most of that. Those decisions left Klopp outraged and so he was sent off shortly before the end. He was given a €10.000 fine by the DFB judges but could dodge a match ban once more.

And so Borussia has only a one point advantage left over the blue scum and the derby will have to decide which of the Ruhrpott archrivals will be the best of the rest in the Bayern dominated Bundesliga. But first it’s CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!!!!!!!!!!!! With Mkhitaryan and possibly Reus returning there is hope we’ll see the full potential of our team on Wednesday.

BVB: Weidenfeller, Piszczek, Sokratis, Hummels, Schmelzer, Kehl, Sahin, Aubameyang, Hofmann, Großkreutz, Lewandowski

Ponies: ter Stegen, Korb, Stranzl, Dominguez, Daems, Nordtveit, Kramer, Herrmann, Arango, Kruse, Raffael

Subs: 63. Jojic für Kehl, 67. Ducksch für Piszczek, 82. Schieber für Aubameyang - 75. Marx für Kruse, 79. Rupp für Herrmann, 89. Brouwers für Raffael

Goals: 0:1 Raffael (31., Herrmann), 0:2 Kruse (40., Arango), 1:2 Jojic (77.)

Ref: Aytekin (Oberasbach),

2nd booking: Nordtveit (69.),

Booked: Lewandowski

Attendance: 80.645 (sold out)

Web, 17.03.2014