Out of the DFB Cup, out of the Champions League – now also out of the Europa League: Borussia Dortmund only managed a 2-2 draw at the Ibrox Stadium at Glasgow Rangers, once again the team conceded far too easy goals.
Marco Rose didn’t want to have anything to do with pressure, stress and fear of failure. “We have to absorb the atmosphere and use it, then it can even be really fun,” said Borussia Dortmund’s coach before his footballers took part in the second leg of the Europa League at Glasgow Rangers with the burden of making up for a 4-2 defeat in the first leg . To put it bluntly, their fun fell by the wayside in freezing cold, wet Scotland.
Glasgow’s Ibrox Stadium is an institution. According to well-travelled fan experts, there is the best football atmosphere in the world. Dortmund would object that this is hardly possible because the best atmosphere prevails in the stadium. There, in front of the corona-related meager crowd of 10,000 spectators, they had embarrassingly lost the first leg a week earlier. Now they should have fixed it in the fully occupied Ibrox. A hell of an undertaking.
Somewhere between heaven and hell, Dortmund play the whole season. Sometimes jubilant, sometimes saddened to death. “Do or die”, eat or die, attacker Marco Reus had given as the motto before the second leg and one had felt: Dortmund’s captain once again did not know what face his team would show. There is a kind of pattern in Dortmund’s zigzag, because if there is a lot at stake in a single game, then the chances of BVB showing a good performance increase. But this pattern wasn’t worth that much on Thursday. About as little as the 6-0 win in the Bundesliga against Borussia Mönchengladbach four days earlier. One could have thought that Dortmund would take this sense of achievement with them to Glasgow. There was a little bit of it, but just not enough. A 2-2 (2-1) draw was not enough for the runners-up in the Scottish league to qualify for the round of 16 in the Europa League. After being eliminated from the Champions League and the DFB Cup, Rose suffered his third disgrace in his first season in Dortmund: being eliminated from the Europa League as well. That doesn’t help his already shaky standing.
Dortmund’s line-up in Glasgow raised certain doubts from the start. Goalscorer Erling Haaland was injured. The line of defense with Niko Schulz on the left and Emre Can on the inside was improvised. Nevertheless, Dortmund dominated. Jude Bellingham initially only hit the post (4th). After 20 minutes, BVB was 5-0 corners. But in the 21st minute, Julian Brandt committed an unnecessary foul on his own penalty line. James Tavernier converted the penalty to make it 1-0 for Glasgow (22nd). Hope germinated when Bellingham made it 1-1 (31st) and Donyell Malen made it 2-1 (42nd) before the break. But then the Westphalians forgot their vigor in the dressing room. When Mats Hummels went over the ball trying to clear, Tavernier got on BVB’s last nerve with the 2-2 equalizer (57th). “We made far too many individual mistakes, unfortunately including me at 2: 2,” said Hummels on RTL, speaking of a “huge disappointment”. And coach Rose also stated: “The goals that we get, again and again, are far too easy.” Soaked up nothing, had no fun, eliminated.
