“As Dortmund we have to act differently”

There would have been some good reasons to be lenient with Borussia Dortmund’s mediocre performance. The Champions League finalists have a new coach, a new game system and a completely different team. A 0-0 draw at Werder Bremen on the second matchday of the new Bundesliga season is a no-brainer.

But it was the new Dortmund coach Nuri Sahin who did not accept any of these reasons after the game on Saturday. “It’s a process, of course. But at Borussia Dortmund this process has to go faster. For us, this point today is of course far too little,” he said. “As Borussia Dortmund we have to perform differently, even if the team has had changes and has a new coach.”

The fact that a lot of things still need to come together in Dortmund after the total rebuilding in the summer was more evident this time than in the successful start to the season against Eintracht Frankfurt (2:0) or the compulsory DFB Cup match against Phönix Lübeck (4:1). Brave Bremen players put BVB under pressure in front of 42,100 spectators. At the beginning, Sahin changed his 3-4-3 system to a 4-2-3-1 formation early on. And in the end, Dortmund were even outnumbered because national player Nico Schlotterbeck was shown a yellow-red card in the 73rd minute after a foul on Justin Njinmah.

“For us, every game is a development,” said Sahin about the big change. “It’s only in this process that it’s important to win games. That speeds up the process.”

Starting eleven debut for Beier

The 35-year-old himself, as the successor to Edin Terzic, is only part of the change at all levels. Together with sporting director Sebastian Kehl, the new sports director Lars Ricken and the new squad planner Sven Mislintat, Sahin completed transfers worth around 80 million euros this summer. Maximilian Beier made his debut in the starting eleven in Bremen. Two of the five new signings, striker Serhou Guirassy and defender Yan Couto, were not even there yet.

The major upheaval continued even after BVB had already arrived in Bremen on the evening before the game. Striker Sébastien Haller was loaned out to Spanish club CD Leganés, the tenth player to leave the team hotel this season. “That’s the brutality of the business,” Sahin told Sky. “He gets on the bus with us to Bremen and then later that evening he’s gone.”

But even after this experience, the coach still said: “The transfer market has its own rules. But that shouldn’t stop us from winning our games. It would be a very cheap excuse to say that it was because of the transfer period.”

Squad too small?

At least: The day after the transfer window ended, those responsible at BVB were very satisfied with their squad planning. Even if there was a suspicion in Bremen that Borussia might have sold a few too many players and is now too thinly staffed for a long season in the Bundesliga, the new Champions League format and the DFB Cup.

After just 52 minutes on Saturday, all four Dortmund defenders had received a yellow card. However, Sahin only had one defender left on the bench, whom he was able to substitute as a precaution.

Sports director Kehl sees this point, but defended the decisions of the sporting management. “Part of the squad planning this year was to slim down the squad a little and fill it with young players who are hungry and who we want to give playing time,” he said. “That’s why we are very reliable, because the squad offers many options and also has a few versatile players.”

Kehl was the one who was much more forgiving of Dortmund’s performance in Bremen than his coach. But he also said at the end: “We didn’t play well today. So we didn’t deserve more today.”

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