The Dissentient

Will start this one by addressing some comments I read yesterday, that Balde struggled against Duranville and Kounde had a great game against Gittens, I felt the opposite as I watched the game, Balde was beaten for pace only once while Kounde, a few times(led to a sitter missed..

by Guirassy as well) and was sloppy on the ball. Balde(47/50 passes), who was key in one or two early chances in the first half and Kounde(46/59 passes) was to his credit instrumental in our second goal but didn't have a great game whatsoever.

Highline + no pressure on the ball, familiar? The solutions we had in the first half(https://x.com/_Dissentient_/st... in the buildup were not present in the second, why? One of the reasons was Dortmund's pressing, more aggressive, with better intent.

On our first goal, Pedri does what he usually does, sucks in 1/2/3 players to release others in time and space, Schlotterbeck makes another bad jump when Nmecha misses Olmo who then makes a top quality pass to Raphinha to finish off the move.

Our pressing was all over the place in the second half, players picking wrong BVB players and getting easily played through, the intensity also dropped, perhaps the reason why Flick made those changes at 71', however not much changed in that dept.

Dortmund's first goal is same thing we have seen over and over again, end to end game, poor decisions on the ball, poor composure and then eventually finding ourselves in a tricky situation where we lose our heads.

The second goal, Ferran's first(who had a poor game otb aside from the 2 goals), is the usual Kounde run(Gittens doesn't do his job well on that) and Ferran finding a loose ball from Fermin's volley, Schlotterbeck and Gittens keep Ferran onside.

Dortmund's second goal is sequence of errors, bad clearances, loss of duels, poor closing downs, infinite spaces b/w the backline, runs from deep not tracked, etc. you name it, and these goals have been more frequent as teams are finding ways to deal with our highline.

On our 3rd goal, Groß taketh and Groß giveth, his error on the pass to Gittens is latched on by every present Pedri(who had a better game off the ball than on it, why?) -> Lamine(excellent pass) -> Ferran(horrible first touch, great finish, had all the time itw thankfully).

I usually don't do this(talking poor performances in post match threads) but Frenkie's cameo was one to forget(2/7 passes) and no this isn't a question of profiling or whatever tactical mumbo jumbo you can come up with, these are extremely simple things,...

elementary things that are criminal for a player of his experience. Missing simple passes that put the team in danger, simple passes that couldn't give continuity to the team's play, positioning, pressing, marking, etc. one of the worst cameos you can find from a Barca player.

Unfortunately, I don't see him getting a start anytime soon(and we need him to). BVB dictated + dominated the second half, an issue that's been happening to us a lot recently and will keep happening until there are solutions coming from the bench, players and managers both.

@FotMob Dortmund could very easily have drawn or even won this game on another day, one can talk about the errors we made and all that but the fact remains. End of thread.