Borussia Dortmund suffered its first point loss of the new year. In the end, BVB had to be satisfied with the 0-0 draw at 1. FC Heidenheim.
Edin Terzic quickly high-fived his players and staff, then the Borussia Dortmund coach disappeared from the field with a scowl on his face. The 0-0 draw with newly promoted 1. FC Heidenheim was a setback for BVB in the race for the Champions League places.
“We didn’t play a good game and didn’t deserve more than this one point,” said Terzic on “DAZN”: “We couldn’t develop any force and hardly create any chances to score. The draw is okay.”
Even the people of Heidenheim didn’t seem completely satisfied. The impression that they could have beaten BVB remained. “We missed out on taking a well-deserved lead,” said FCH coach Frank Schmidt: “Dortmund had a lot of possession, but we had almost a perfect distribution of space and won the ball a lot. It’s not undeserved, we had enough chances.”
Coach Edin Terzic’s team was once again hardly able to impress against courageous Heidenheim players and missed the jump to third place in the table. After the surprising 2-2 draw in the first leg at the beginning of September, Heidenheim once again proved to be a stumbling block for harmless Dortmund and extended its own series to an impressive seven games without defeat.
Terzic had warned his team of a “difficult” task – and again had to do without numerous players. As against Bochum, Gregor Kobel, Julian Brandt and Marco Reus were missing from the Dortmund squad, and Jadon Sancho was also out due to muscular problems.
BVB with mistakes, Heidenheim courageous from the start
The Dortmund team that was on the field found it difficult to get into the game. On the offensive, BVB showed a lack of ideas despite having a lot of possession, but that also had something to do with the hosts. As usual, Heidenheim appeared brave and aggressive, stood securely at the back – and almost took the lead.
After a bad mistake by Salih Özcan, Tim Kleindienst (14th) got the ball in the Dortmund penalty area, but shot past the half-empty goal. A wake-up call for BVB? Not really. The runner-up allowed Heidenheim to advance to their own penalty area without any resistance. But the newcomer too often lacked precision, which was almost punished.
Hardly any highlights in round two
Donyell Malen (26th) took advantage of Dortmund’s first real chance to take the lead. Only the Dutchman was offside and the video referee overturned the goal. In a now more balanced game, BVB also appeared offensively a few times, but it was no longer dangerous on either side.
Dortmund visibly tried to take control of the game after half-time. Heidenheim was now primarily challenged defensively, but was still able to easily keep Dortmund’s harmless team away from the goal. Since the hosts’ counter-attacks mostly fizzled out, the game only provided a few highlights.