Borussia Dortmund 3 – 0 Schalke
24/10/20
Bundesliga
Borussia Dortmund reign supreme in the Ruhr after beating local rivals Schalke.
Goals from Manuel Akanji, Erling Haaland and Mats Hummels gave Dortmund a three-nil victory over their neighbour city.
It’s worrying times for Schalke who have now lost four of their five opening league games and have already conceded nineteen goals.
Dortmund stay in touch with title rivals Bayern Munich and Leipzig who both won today.
-Matchday 3: Dortmund brush aside Freiburg with Sancho mysteriously missing
The mother of all derbies
Franz Beckenbauer once summed up the national game by saying the heart of German football beats in the Ruhr, while former Schalke president Günter Siebert hired lions to accompany the players out to the game in 1970.
It means a lot when the two main teams of Germany’s industrial heartland, separated by a mere twenty miles, meet each other in the derby. And it’s always close.
In the current Bundesliga record Dortmund lead the way by just two; thirty-four wins to thirty-two, and the BlackYellows would need another victory after their title rivals both won earlier in the day.
RB Leipzig and Bayern Munich were both victorious at lunchtime, extending their points tally to thirteen and twelve, with Dortmund on nine coming into the game.
For Schalke they’re threatening to do a Bremen this season and cast doubt on their impressive Bundesliga record. In this their twenty-ninth straight Bundesliga campaign, the Royal Blues sit second from bottom having only picked up a point in four games.
Tense first half
Dortmund are developing the rather bad habit of starting slowly under Lucien Favre.
It took the BlackYellows thirty minutes to score against Freiburg two weeks ago and over seventy to find the back of the net against Hoffenheim last weekend.
This time it took them almost an hour as Dortmund eventually overcame a stubborn but inferior Schalke side.
For a game of such importance it seems almost insulting that a sluggish Dortmund would show up at Signal Iduna Park for the ‘mother of all derbies’.
Credit partly has to go to Schalke, who harried and pressed Dortmund in the opening stages, making it uncomfortable for the BlackYellows’ array of stars.
Danger-men Sancho and Haaland both got shots away within ten minutes but neither troubled Frederik Ronnow.
However the Schalke stopper would be called into action minutes later when a good passage of play by Dortmund saw Haaland work the ball to Thomas Meunier who’s powerful shot was blocked from a tight angle by Ronnow.
This was just before Schalke fullback Malick Thiaw looked almost mischievously at referee Felix Zwayer after bringing down Giovanni Reyna in the box.
Not surprisingly the match quickly turned into a game of attack versus defence as Dortmund exerted their dominance.
On the half hour mark Haaland dragged a shot across goal after working himself some space in the box and then the impressive Mahmoud Dahoud let rip a rocket that dipped and swerved in the air before smashing off Ronnow’s crossbar.
A Syrian refugee, Dahoud is beginning to make waves in German football having recently received his first call-up to Joachim Löw’s squad.
Schalke’s forays into Dortmund territory were few.
The closet they came to opening their account was mid-way through the first half when loanee forward Goncalo Paciencia managed to squirm some room in the box for himself, but his powerful shot was deflected wide.
The last chance of the half fell to Reyna at the back post, which is as much worth a mention for the audacious outside of the boot cross by Meunier as the glaring miss by the US forward.
Second half wheels come off for Schalke
The opening goal of the derby came through a combination of misfortune and brilliance.
Schalke’s Bastian Oczipka almost nodded it into his own net clearing a Dortmund free-kick ten minutes into the second half.
The German looked on in relief watching his header loop over Ronnow’s bar, however that relief turned into shock seeing the brilliance of Brandt moments later.
The German international flicked the resulting corner into the path of Raphael Guerreiro who smashed a low drive which Ronnow spilled and Manuel Akanji nipped in to score.
Five minutes later it looked as though the Royal Blues would concede a costly defeat in the Revierderby as Dortmund made it two-nil through that man Haaland.
The Norwegian giant has now scored eighteen in twenty Bundesliga matches and five from five in all comps this season, with a lovely clipped finished after Sancho drove at the Schalke backline and played the BVB frontman into the box.
Mats Hummels nodded in a third through Guerreiro’s corner on seventy-seven minutes
It was to be Dortmund’s day in the Ruhr Valley.
Man of the Match: Mahmoud Dahoud
He won double the duels of Schalke’s best tackler on the day – Paciencia, and his shot in the first half was a thing the finest German engineers would have been proud of. The German international also made things tick in the tricky opening stages of the match.
BVB, 4-2-3-1: Burki, Hummels(C), Akanji, Delaney, Meunier, Dahoud, Brandt, Guerreiro, Sancho, Reyna, Haaland
Subs: Hitz, Reus, Hazard, Reiner, Bellingham, Witsel, Morey, Piszczek, Passlack
Schalke, 3-3-2-2: Ronnow, Thiaw, Sane, Nastasic, Ludewig, Harit, Mascarell(C), Bentaleb, Oczipka, Matondo, Paciencia
Subs: Mendyl, Raman, Ibisevic, Kutucu, Stambouli, Skrzybski, Schopf, Langer, Bozdogan
Goals: Akanji 55′, Haaland 61′, Hummels 77′
Harry Jamshid Reporter Sports Pages 