Mainz’s disaster brings back worse memories of Dortmund’s loss

Photo: Uwe Kraft/AFP/Getty Images

Not them again, already. Mainz 2023 has already defined Borussia Dortmund once and now, with the year heading towards Westfalen’s deflation, it could be at risk of doing so again. Sunday’s traditional Christmas gathering at Signal Iduna Park, with carols and shows in front of a crowd of 73,056, may have meant a moratorium on complaints and concerns for a team that has gone from the distance of history to sleepwalking through the winter. But 48 hours later at the same venue the concerns were back threefold.

“It’s not working at the moment,” captain Emre Can said after dropping more points on Tuesday, and there was no arguing with him after Dortmund extended their current Bundesliga run to a win one in eight – and no victory in the. the last four. Seven months on from the 05ers’ last visit, a game that will haunt Dortmund’s dreams for years as the Bundesliga title slips through their terrified fingers, it has not been comparable in terms of losses. The draw with Mainz in early spring was a disaster and this was a symptom rather than a cause. This second draw, however, emphasized how difficult the ongoing consequences of the first round are.

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If it was Mainz who were the target again – and a week to bring back painful memories for those associated with BVB, with goalkeeper now-Augsburg, Finn Dahmen denying them three points on Saturday after keeping them safe already on that fate. May Day – they were just the scenery of the nativity. The drama was all Dortmund’s, just as it was at the desperate peak of their title dream.

Mainz are struggling, with Bo Svensson gone and Jan Siewert shepherding the team in the interim. They came in 16th place, the relegation playoff action, and they were almost spectators early on. Julian Brandt’s free-kick was just barely enough to break the deadlock as the home side dominated, with Jamie Bynoe-Gittins and (after Brandt’s goal) Marcel Sabitzer slotting home.

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Like most years in the post-Jürgen Klopp era, however, an act of self-sabotage always feels as if it’s in the job. A scruffy goal concession to Sepp van den Berg from a set piece just before the interval sent the teams back to the dressing rooms with even pegging, and the suspense. There have been opportunities to secure a much-needed win for Dortmund before. the end, but in reality it would not have deserved to be equalized in the second half. “This is an unsatisfactory end to an unsatisfactory first half of the season,” Brandt summed up afterwards. Can’s comment on Dortmund’s current stasis wasn’t a shot at the coach, but there’s little getting away with stopping the buck for listless, shapeless performances.

The last time BVB dumped a coach in the middle of the season was when Lucien Favre was shown the door in mid-December 2020 after a 5-1 home humiliation against Stuttgart, which gave Terzić his first spell, which kept the hot seat for Marco Rose. come the following summer. That particular pressure in front of the Yellow Wall led to long-term anger, but it’s worth noting that Favre’s side were only two points away from the top four when he was eliminated. Today Dortmund are six points behind fourth-placed Leipzig. It is still no consolation that Germany are in pole position to be one of the two nations to secure five Champions League slots in next season’s reformatted competition.

Terzić can claim that his record in the second half of the season is good; remember his team were sixth at last year’s Winterpause and still went into the season finale with the title in their hands, as well as winning the DfB Pokal, Leipzig’s hammering in the 2021 final, in his interim period. There is also sympathy from upstairs, with unconditional support from the coach so far from CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke, who has highlighted the emotional difficulty of trying to overcome last season’s heartbreak, not to mention the best player they lost in Jude Bellingham. . Watzke consistently stressed Terzić who will be his coach for the duration, “full stop”.

Werder Bremen 1-1 RB Leipzig, Dortmund 1-1 Mainz, Hoffenheim 3-3 Darmstadt, Union Berlin 2-0 Cologne, Eintracht Frankfurt 2-1 Borussia Mönchengladbach, Heidenheim 3-2 Freiberg, Stuttgart 3-0 Augsenburg, Lever 0 Bochum , Wolfsburg 1-2 Bayern Munich

He, sporting director Sebastian Kehl and adviser Matthias Sammer will meet to discuss the future this week, and there is still no certainty that they will make time for Terzič. But even if Watzke is forced to make a decision he’d rather not make, the problems run deeper. There is also pressure on Kehl, whose recruitment has done little to address the squad’s imbalances or weak areas. However there was a lack of cohesive thinking in the recruitment before he arrived in the summer of 2022. The sense that everyone has seen this before was reinforced by the disappointing TV ratings for the Mainz game, with a modest 2.9 million viewers on Sat.1 for the final game free. -to-air game of the year the lowest audience on the channel for a live game this season.

Terzić’s appearance on the field during Sunday’s Christmas show, walking along with his daughters to You’ll Never Walk Alone, was everything. A good club man, there with his family, where he belongs. If he goes, it will hurt him and the club. The problem is that the next incumbent won’t have a magic wand to fix it all, and BVB knows it.

Talking points

• Well done to you all Leverkusen, top and still winless going into Christmas after the first part of the season, even the dreamless Xabi Alonso. They agreed for 2023 with a 4-0 demolition of Bochum, which gave strong hints of how they could cope without a host of players, led by Victor Boniface, leaving for the Africa Cup of Nations in January . Patrik Schick started in Boniface’s place and helped himself to a hat-trick. “With this quality behind me, with Florian [Wirtz] and Jonas [Hofmann], it’s very easy to score a goal,” Schick told Sky. “It’s a dream for strikers.”

• Like Stuttgart, Bayern won their game at Wolfsburg despite the team being injured – including Raphaël Guerreiro, who “spent the whole night on the toilet” according to Thomas Tuchel, but gave an excellent performance in the middle of the field. Rangers Harry Kane’s long-range cracker (Bundesliga goal No. 21) proved the winner after Max Arnold unexpectedly pulled it back to 2-1, so the champions had to dig in after the interval, and they did . “I think a lot of players are happy that there is a little break now,” said Manuel Neuer as he made a beeline.

• Stuttgart, meanwhile, move into third place after beating Augsburg 3-0, with Serhou Guirassy bagging his 17th of the season.

• Three cheers too for Heidenheim, who are ninth in the Bundesliga for the first time after another impressive win, recovering twice to beat Freiburg. “It’s very important,” coach Frank Schmidt said of his team’s 20-point haul, significant in a season where the bottom six have so far been at a point per game or less. “Nobody would have believed we could do it.”