Everything is different for Borussia Dortmund, travelling to their Europa League fixture this week. For the first time the team are travelling on two separate planes, as the small regional airport in Skien is only big enough for small 30-seater aircraft to take off and land. 

Boris Rupert reports from Skien

After a flight of 1 hour and 40 minutes, the two twin propeller aircrafts (type Dornier 328-100) landed safely on Norwegian soil. Lukasz Piszczeck and Marco Reus were missing from the plane, as they have stayed in Dortmund as a precaution with the game against Ingolstadt on Sunday in mind, as well as the second leg against Odds BK in the coming week and the league home game against Hertha BSC. They don’t want to take any chances.

“It’s not good for my body to play on artificial grass, especially after my injury”, explained Reus, who is already in great shape early in the season: “Because I was injured a lot last season, I never got into my rhythm, so it’s very good that I was able to take part in a full pre season. As a result I now have a high level of fitness.”

 

“Better an artificial pitch than a bad one!”

Although Borussia Dortmund will play their first ever match on artificial grass, the fact that the ball bounces very differently than on grass is no big deal. This evening, during the final training session in the Skagerak Arena, the team trained on artificial grass for the first time and they will train on it again in the morning. In Dortmund they decided not to train on their one and only artificial pitch.

“We all know what it’s like to play on an artificial pitch”, assures Mats Hummels and he explains that: “We played on an artificial pitch for years when we were younger, but of course we prefer to play on grass.” As an afterthought the captain said: “For a good game, it’s better to play on an artificial pitch than on a bad one, as in our away game against Wolfsberg.” BVB won 1-0 on a slippery surface three weeks ago and three more wins with clean sheets have followed. “That’s a strong start, and you have to be satisfied”, said Hans Joachim Watzke and he added: “But we can’t be complacent.”

After the Gladbach celebrations the focus is on the Europa League

The team seem to have taken this on board. “It’s not difficult for us to tick Gladbach off the list and focus all of our attention onto the Europa League”, reiterated Ilkay Gündogan. After the celebrations of the league opener (4-0) and with a view to the match against their unsung Norwegian opponents, he said: “We have to pick up where we left off on Saturday.”

Incidentally, Watzke got his information about Odds BK first hand: “We know Björn Gulden, the CEO of Puma, who used to be a Bundesliga player. He was able to give us information because he knows one or two of the players.”