In the 23. competitive match of season 2015/16, Borussia Dortmund suffered just their second defeat on Friday evening. Everyone involved agreed that the 1-3 defeat at Hamburger SV was just as unnecessary as it was the team’s own fault. And still the team showed morale and they showed glimpses of what they are capable of even on days when nothing seems to go their way.

Even though it was our “worst performance of the season” (Roman Bürki), BVB could have got one point out of the game if Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who is usually so clinical in front of goal, would have taken advantage of one of his two golden opportunities to get a goal back to make it 1-2 at the start of the second half. Because coming from behind, Black Yellow dominated the game more and more, they had 69 per cent possession, they won 58% of the challenges and they had three times as many attempts on goal (21:7) than their opponent.

Regardless of the fact that they were trailing 0-3 after 55 minutes, the team showed real morale and they ran their hearts out right until the last minute of the game. However the 1-3 through Aubameyang came too late to take one point off HSV, who were wobbling a bit at the end, but who did not collapse. Their Head Coach Bruno Labbadia commented: “we could not even be sure of victory when we were 3-0 up.” In the end the post and an excellent René Adler in the HSV goal prevented Dortmund from getting a second and third goal.

Tuchel: „maybe this for the best and will be good for us”

Thomas Tuchel added sensibly: „being behind 0-3 was too much for us, which meant that our improved performance was still not enough for us to get anything from the game. Maybe this is for the best and will be good for us.” After the first defeat of the season, when again the  1-5 in Munich was not really a fair reflection of the game and the final result, seven wins in a row followed in all competitions.

The team has built up such a good reputation this season through their performances, that a “completely unnecessary” (Tuchel) 1-3 defeat at Hamburger SV will not affect their status overall. It will be much more a matter of searching for the reasons of how this could have happened and the Head Coach will have critical words to say: “for 45 minutes we were way behind the standards that we set ourselves, we weren’t ready to play this game right from the first second in a way whereby we were anywhere near how we should position ourselves and pass the ball, something that we have been doing brilliantly for the last series of games.”

Schmelzer: „There is no one to blame but ourselves“

Marcel Schmelzer said: „we have put a big dent into the excellent position that we were in and that we have worked very hard for over many weeks."

The reason for this is unlikely to be the connection between the performance and the fact that the game in Hamburg was the first game after the terror attacks in Paris and the late cancellation of the international in Hannover. Anyway, the team is made up of human beings, not of machines. Tuchel said about his players Hummels, Gündogan and Ginter who were involved in those incidents: “I don’t think it is my place to comment about what feelings my players will have had about these situations.”

They are off to Krasnodar on Thursday

Just before midnight the team coach departed the Volksparkstadion for the journey home. Schmelzer said: “we will have enough time to think about our mistakes in the three and a half hour journey home. We have to play better the next time.” This will probably be part of the match plan to decide the group winner in the UEFA Europa League, when BVB face FC Krasnodar in the south of Russia. Boris Rupert