Pre-Match Report
When BVB wrote history at White Hart Lane
Today, a state-of-the-art venue stands on the same site: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. When Borussia Dortmund take on Spurs in the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday evening (21:00 CET, live on Prime), memories will surely come flooding back for the fans and those in the Black & Yellow delegation who were there almost ten years ago and were met with high regard and honest respect from their opponents.
In the previous season, the last with Jürgen Klopp on the sidelines, the Black and Yellows had struggled to qualify for the UEFA Europa League (and missed out on the Champions League for the only time between 2011 and 2025). Klopp’s successor, Thomas Tuchel, slowly warmed to the competition, as the road to the round of 16 was a rocky one. First, Wolfsberger AC (Austria) and Odds BK (Norway) had to be eliminated in the qualifying rounds, and the group stage offered few attractive opponents, but instead arduous trips to FC Krasnodar in Russia and Qäbälä FK in Azerbaijan. And at PAOK Saloniki (Greece), the opposing fan base started a riot.
But when his team had secured a good starting position in the round of 32 with a 2-0 win over FC Porto in Dortmund, Tuchel said to his assistant Arno Michels on the way to training in Porto: “Now we want to win the thing.” He was referring to the one European piece of silverware that was still missing from BVB’s trophy cabinet, where for many years the Champions League and Cup Winners' Cup have proudly stood: the UEFA Cup. With a 1-0 away win, his team advanced to the round of 16, where they were drawn against Tottenham Hotspur.
Coach Mauricio Pochettino’s team had set its sporting priorities on the league at the time. Before and between the matches against Borussia Dortmund, the gap to leaders Manchester City had grown from two to five points, but Tottenham Hotspur’s hopes of winning their first championship in England were still alive. And so, in the first leg at SIGNAL IDUNA PARK, the Black & Yellows encountered perhaps less resistance than might have been expected. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Marco Reus (twice) took advantage of three of numerous chances to take a 3-0 lead, and Roman Weidenfeller’s save against Heung-Min Son shortly before the end secured an excellent starting position for the second leg.
On course for the next round
Borussia were very attentive in defence, even though the back four had never played together in this configuration before. The first chance to score an away goal came in the 14th minute: Henrik Mkhitaryan laid the ball back from the byline to Reus, who hit the side netting from around seven metres out on the left. Dortmund cleverly closed down the space and only had to survive two dangerous situations in the first half. Immediately after Eric Dier’s header (23), Aubameyang set the course for qualification with a stunning goal, as the ball made its way into the back of the net via the right-hand post (24).
Four minutes later, Aubameyang stole the ball from Kevin Wimmer and ran towards goal alone, but hesitated too long in front of Hugo Lloris. However, with a 4-0 lead from the first and second legs, the game was already over at half-time, although there were still a few fast-paced moments after the break. Tottenham did not want to be eliminated with a home defeat, while Dortmund focused on counter-attacks. Mkhitaryan played a pass through the gap in the defence to Aubameyang, who converted to make it 2-0 (70). At the other end, Neven Subotic, who had been so strong up to that point, made a mistake when he passed back too weakly to Weidenfeller, allowing Son to make it 2-1. But in the end, it didn’t matter. BVB became the first German team to win at White Hart Lane – and reached the quarter-finals!
In the last eight, the action moved from the Lane to an even more famous road, Anfield Road in Liverpool. There, however, the Black & Yellows experienced one of the most traumatic moments in their glorious history, missing out on a place in the semi-finals despite leading 2-0 and 3-1. After 90 minutes, the score was 3-3, and even that would have been enough to advance due to the away goals rule in force at the time (first leg 1-1), but Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren scored in extra time to make it 4-3...
Thus, Borussia Dortmund’s victory at White Hart Lane is historic, but also only a footnote in the club’s history. Because the “U-U-EFA” Cup is still missing from the trophy cabinet.
Boris Rupert