Borussia Dortmund between world and district class

Nuri Şahin knows from his playing career how challenging the double burden of the league and Champions League can be. But he didn’t want to accept this as an apology after the disappointing 1:2 at 1. FC Union Berlin on Saturday afternoon.

“It’s totally human that you don’t put in a top performance every three days,” said the Borussia Dortmund coach. “If you want to be a top team, and we want that, it’s about getting results every three days.” Neither one nor the other succeeded on Saturday. BVB played shockingly poorly, especially in the first half, and deservedly lost despite an improvement in performance after the break.

Two defeats after six games are too much for Dortmund’s demands, which are once again a mystery. In the Champions League, BVB is in an excellent position with six points and is even top of the table after the thrilling 7-1 win against Celtic Glasgow on Tuesday, the biggest win in the club’s history in this competition. Four days later the team was unrecognizable. Typical BVB, one almost has to say when looking at the recent past.

Last season, Dortmund suffered from extreme fluctuations in performance that seemed to border on a split personality. Dr. Jekyll reached the final of the Champions League and was unfortunately defeated by Real Madrid. Mr. Hyde failed to win against Mainz or Heidenheim in the Bundesliga and ended up in fifth place, 27 points behind champions Leverkusen.

Even after the coaching change from Edin Terzic to Şahin, BVB continues to search in vain for consistency. BVB conceded eleven goals in the last four Bundesliga games. “We definitely have to address that, we’ll think about it,” said the coach.

Şahin and his players seemed slightly perplexed on Saturday. The double burden, an unpleasant opponent who took Dortmund’s midfield center out of the game through his high pressing, the defensive weaknesses – these are all partial aspects, but no one had a coherent explanation for the poor performance.

The coach did not want to get involved in a detailed football tactical discussion immediately after the final whistle. “We can talk about why we play such a first half, but this is not the time to talk about what kind of football I want to see,” said 36-year-old Şahin, who won the championship as a player with BVB in 2011 .

On Saturday, he was much more concerned with the basics than with questions of style, which his team didn’t do for long stretches. The term “mentality”, which has been on the index at BVB for some time, could almost be heard between the lines. “If you don’t shine like you did today, you still have to defend your goal and go into the dressing room with a 0-0 score,” said Şahin.

Gregor Kobel saw it similarly and used the first Champions League game as a comparison. “We play every three days. We travel a lot, we go to bed late, you’re tired. It’s difficult to perform at 100 percent for 90 minutes every three days,” said the BVB goalkeeper. In Bruges, despite a weaker performance, the team kept a clean sheet “and in the end we make our mistake and go home with three points.”

Dortmund are currently unable to do that in the Bundesliga. So BVB goes into the international break in a bad mood and with lots of question marks.