“Lack of imagination”
Mats Hummels criticizes BVB’s performance
November 26, 2025 – 12:33 a.mReading time: 2 minutes
BVB is definitely on target in terms of sport this season. However, the club is not always convincing in terms of play. Former player Mats Hummels sees this as reason for criticism.
Mats Hummels sees poor performances at his former club Borussia Dortmund this season. Before Borussia’s Champions League game against FC Villarreal, the 2014 world champion said on the Amazon Prime steaming service: “Nobody denies the team that they want to fight, that they fight, that they do that for 90 minutes. But there is a bit of a lack of imagination that it can lead to even better performances.”
BVB is in a respectable fourth place in the Bundesliga and still has a chance of surviving the league phase in the Champions League. But before the Villarreal encounter there were three games in a row without a win. “You have the feeling that we now see a stable team that brings the basics onto the pitch. But that’s all we see in a negative sense,” said Hummels.
“The really big playful highlights are missing, that is, when an opponent is dismantled in terms of football,” was his analysis. Although there were two or three clear results this season, the course of the game was not that clear in each case. The fans longed for more playful highlights. But he qualified: “In principle, the way the team approaches games is good.”
Hummels later added: “We’re talking about the fact that we’re ‘okay’ right now, but we also want BVB to be ‘very good’. You can imagine: BVB is playing for the championship, playing for the Champions League quarter-finals, semi-finals or more. Something is missing right now.”
However, Hummels expressed the hope that the game against Villarreal could provide an impetus for more – and he was not disappointed. In the end, BVB beat the Spaniards 4-0. However, he only managed to convince in the second half, when Villarreal was outnumbered by a red card.