Feeling like a Bremen-supporter

After this amazing, incredible and heartbreaking start into the group stage of this season's Europa League, I can imagine the rollercoaster supporters of Werder Bremen have to face nearly every week. The match was won shortly before the break, in half two, it seemed that BVB will lose it, and as everyone was happy with the tie, Mario Götze secured the 4-3 (2-1) victory away at Lwiw. One day later, it seems easier to talk (and write) about this memorable match.

Before the match

For the first time for years, Borussia was back in European competition and had to travel to the Ukraine, to a city called Lwiw. Around 900 supporters travelled to Lwiw, some of them (around 300) were attacked before the match by supporters of our opposing team. A sad moment, especially when you think about Ukraine being one of the hosts of the European Cup in 2012. Leaving this topic and turning to the pre-match, our starting line-up had two changes in comparison to our victory against Wolfsburg last Saturday. Kehl was out with an injury (again) and will be out for the derby, too. His place in the squad was taken by Sven "Manni" Bender. In addition, Kloppo chose to put Kuba on the bench again and to bring youngster Mario Götze, which turned out to be the most important decision of the match. At this time, I could write about the line-up of our opponent, but since all of them end with something like –ky, -ic or –ov, I'll leave it with saying that two of the club players were out due to red cards in their match against Galatasaray.

First half

Like I said before, the match seemed to be perfect in the beginning. After Lucas was taken down by a combination of keeper Tlumak and a defender, Sahin scored with a penalty in minute 12. Fifteen minutes later, Barrios proved that he is not only a great scorer, but also a team player when he saw Mario Götze in the penalty area and for the first, but not the last time in this match, the 18-year old had his nerves under control and doubled the score. Impressive. So everything went fine and Borussia seemed to be the winner of this match, to be honest, it was more or less something about the result, a shot by Lucas was saved by Tlumak (36th). But then, out of nowhere and after big trouble in Borussia's defense with Hummels, Subotic and Weidenfeller not knowing what they're doing, Golodyuk saw his chance and hit the 1-2, which was the result of the first 45 minutes. An annoying goal for Lwiw was the only thing to complain about in this first half, which all-in-all was pretty good by our young team.

Second half

With the beginning of the second half, the page totally turned against us and we paid the price of having such a young team: Subotic pass back to Hummels was nothing to be afraid of, but for some reason (perhaps the special atmosphere in the stadium of Lwiw), our defender lost control of the ball and Zenjov capitalized. In a match where nobody expected it, it was 2-2 out of nowhere. But it even got worse. After having bad luck in two situations - a free kick by Sahin only hit the bar (76th) and only a few seconds later, Barrios found the same misfortune (77th) - BVB seemed to be back in the match and the lead could have been back again, but again, unexpected trouble rose in our defense. Owomoyela dreamt about whatever, the ball got to Kozhanov and suddenly, Lwiw was ahead. The total shock was perfect, everything spoke against us. But with big fighting spirit and morale, we came back... incredibly. Super-Lucas fought his way through the opposing defense, a give-and-go with Lewandowski, who was brought in earlier, and a great shot without showing nerves ended up in the equalizer. And for the next moment, I want you to close your eyes and imagine the following: Imagine you are a 18-year old, playing for Borussia Dortmund (incredibly enough) anywhere in the Ukraine. After an amazing match-up, you get the ball in minute 92 and you are in front of the goalkeeper... Would you have the guts to hit that ball the way Mario Götze did? I would have missed the ball probably, but Super Mario became the hero of that night by scoring the 4-3. An incredible match found the happy end for Borussia because of Götze and because of Lucas who was part of every of the four goals.

Aftermath

It was an important victory against the opponent who seemed to be the underdog in our top-group. 3 points and four goals mean a good start into the group stage. But our defense, especially Mats Hummels have to thank Götze and Co. for turning the page again and Hummels was honest enough to acknowledge that. "Well, I think I have to thank Mario with a beer or two, but I'm not quite sure if he is allowed to drink.", Hummels said smilingly after the match. For the derby on Sunday, our match against Lwiw means two things. First: If our defense has a bad day like this again, it will be hard to win in Scheisse, but Second: If our team shows that passion, fighting spirit and morale again, we will beat the blue-white enemy and send them home with nothing but tears.

Stats:

Karpaty Lwiw: Tlumak - Petrivsky, Milosevic, Tubic, Danilo Avelar - Godwin - Khudobyak, Golodyuk - Kozhanov, Batista, Zenjov

Subs: Kopolovets for Batista (13th), Checher for Kozhanov (90th)

Borussia Dortmund: Weidenfeller [3] – Owomoyela [4,5], Subotic [4,5], Hummels [5], Schmelzer [3,5] – Bender [3,5], Sahin [3] – Götze [2], Kagawa [3,5], Großkreutz [4] – Barrios [1]

Subs: Lewandowski [2,5] und Kuba [3] for Kagawa und Großkreutz (64th), da Silva für Bender (80th)

Goals: 0-1 Sahin (12th, penalty), 0-2 Götze (27th), 1-2 Golodyuk (44th), 2-2 Kopolovets (52th), 3-2 Kozhanov (78th), 3-3 Barrios (87th), 3-4 Götze (90th)

Referee: Claudio Circhetta (Swiss)

Bookigns: Tlumak, Godwin, Kopolovets, Petrivskiy - Hummels, Lewandowski

Attendance: 28.051 (sold-out)

Vanni, 17.09.2010