Borussia Dortmund: Mario Gotze (9″), Marco Reus (41″)
Werder Bremen: Milot Rashica (7″), Marco Frield (55″)
Borussia Dortmund lost further ground in the Bundesliga title race as Werder Bremen snatched a well deserved draw at Westfalenstadion on Saturday evening.
Bremen started well and opened the scoring as Dortmund defence allowed Milot Rashica to crash a volley from Davy Klaaseen’s chip. But the hosts were level within two minutes when Mario Gotze headed in from Lukasz Piszczek’s cross.
Paco Alcacer did not start today, Favre opted to rest him and start with Mario Gotze. The German international combined with Hazard and Reus for Dortmund the build-up. He scored a headed goal to level the score 1-1. He was replaced by Alcacer in the second half as Dortmund put every effort to snatch a win. The Spaniard had two big chances come his way before the end of the game that he would’ve buried on another day, but he seemed to be coming up short. On the first occasion he missed his kick by inches, and on the other he connected but blazed it slightly higher than the crossbar.
Team
???? #BVB STARTING XI ????
GÖTZEUS ALERT! #BVBSVW pic.twitter.com/2g2x27Tngz
— Borussia Dortmund (@BlackYellow) September 28, 2019
So gehen wir es beim @BVB an! ????
Auf der Bank ergänzen: Kapino – Veljkovic, Pizarro, J. Eggestein, Straudi, Goller und Bargfrede. #Werder | #bvbsvw pic.twitter.com/DHqdUPJkMU
— SV Werder Bremen (@werderbremen) September 28, 2019
Head to Head
After Match
Lucien Favre: “We had the chance to win 3-2 or 4-2. The game was okay, but we didn’t command or control it. There was too much to and fro, we took too many risks and lost possession too much. We can play much better. We have to find the balance- of course we’re disappointed today, that is clear.”
”We had 65% possession, but too often we didn’t make the right decision,” said Lucien Favre, who had further critical words for his side’s performance: ”Sometimes we dribbled too much. Then we’d lose the ball, they’d counter-attack down the other end and all of a sudden we’d find ourselves in a very dangerous situation. We should look to play through the opposition defence with our passing game.”
Further statements made by the head coach gave additional insight into where works needs to be done: ”It was okay on the whole, but we’re still missing something. We can’t always score lots of goals.” Favre has a clear vision of what his side now needs to focus on: ”We managed to keep a clean sheet against Leverkusen and Barca, but unfortunately not against Frankfurt and Bremen. It’s not easy to win a game if you concede two goals.” The injury-enforced absence of Mats Hummels and the resultant adjustment to the back-four clearly had a negative impact.
Florian Kohfeldt: ”…they’re able to score a goal out of nowhere. They pull you out wide and then look to strike. That’s so hard to defend against. Dortmund are an absolute top side in that regard.” The first-half headed goals from Mario Götze (1-1) and Marco Reus (2-1) resulted from similar passages of play. Unfortunately, the Black & Yellows were unable to add to their tally in the second half. “At half time we had a quick chat about the wings, because we were too passive there, aside from that we only addressed our possession game. I said they need to trust themselves, because they can do this. I am satisfied, but no more than that.”
Roman Bürki– ”We have to be more clinical, both in defence and in attack. We’ve been playing some attractive football, but we’re just lacking that killer instinct,”
