After Borussia Dortmund’s 2-0 defeat to Bayer Leverkusen in the opening game of the Bundesliga season, football fans believing strongly in statistics might be tempted to rush to their local bookies today to bet their houses.

Because some facts and figures suggest that Bundesliga history could repeat itself, and that the Bundesliga false start may prove to be a good omen after all. Because every time Borussia Dortmund lose their opening match at home 2-0 to Bayer Leverkusen, and Bayern Munich beat VfL Wolfsburg 2-1 the day before – as happened in 2010/11 - they go on to win the Bundesliga title…

Such optimism and believe in statistics was – understandably – not shared by the BVB players in the hours following the 2-0 defeat. They were very critical in their analysis of the game, especially with the inexplicable and sleepy start.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 – it took Karim Bellarabi this many seconds to put the visitors into the lead at a sold out Signal Iduna Park on Saturday. Never before in the history of the Bundesliga has a goal been scored earlier in the game. Instead of pushing forward in front of their home crowd as expected, BVB looked shell shocked after conceding so early. “This was a total false start,” said Eric Durm.

“For the first minute, I have no explanation. We were two steps behind in three or four situations. We were simply not present,” said BVB coach Jürgen Klopp, while accepting his share of the blame for Karim Bellarabi’s record goal. “Our start to the match was so poor, the lads cannot be held solely responsible for it.”

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Matthias Ginter went close with a header shortly before the end.

Especially Bayer’s intense pressing high up the pitch caused Borussia a myriad of problems in the opening stages. The visitors had, at times, up to eight players in the opposing half when Borussia were in possession, which actually was not that surprising of a tactical move. “It was clear that Leverkusen would play like this. That was not the problem,” said Klopp. The BVB coach rather complained that his team didn’t “shift play enough.”  Eric Durm confirmed: “We talked about the fact that Bayer would press us early in training.” And goalkeeper Mitch Langerak, who suffered his first defeat in this 11th Bundesliga game, said: “We actually had solutions for it in store but were unable to make use of them.”

On top of that, BVB also only had a 44 percent (later 48 percent) tackle success rate in the first half, and were only able to improve their display in the second half.  “Then we took control of the game. We were physically stronger, and better in all areas,” said Klopp.

Ginter sees header denied by Leno
“With a bit of luck we could have scored, but we were not clinical enough,” said Jonas Hoffmann who came in for Marco Reus on 75 minutes. BVB may have not created clear-cut opportunities but they still fought their way back into the game. Klopp: “We were dangerous whenever we played some football.” Matthias Ginter had the best chance for BVB with six minutes left on the clock, but saw his bouncing header tipped to safety by Bayer keeper Bernd Leno.

“We went close to scoring a few times, but the ball would not go it,” said Mitchell Langerak. After Aubameyang failed to find the net in the fourth minute of stoppage time, Stefan Kiessling made the most of an error by Eric Durm (“I gave the ball away easily, it was my mistake”) to seal the match for the visitors. At the end of the day, the match is probably best summed up for BVB in the words of Mitchell Langerak, saying: “Today was not our day.”