Borussia Dortmund’s Build-Up Conundrum Laid Bare in Athletic Bilbao Defeat

Borussia Dortmund followed up an underwhelming performance against Sunderland with a true stinker against Athletic Club Bilbao on Tuesday, ending their training camp in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland, with a 1-0 defeat.

There are a number of mitigating circumstances to consider, of course.

The Basques played, by and large, with their first-choice XI, a team that came fifth in La Liga last season and only went out of the UEFA Europa League at the quarter-final stage to eventual winners Sevilla in a penalty shootout.

The Black and Yellows, on the other hand, played a ragtag team, with first starts in pre-season for Lukasz Piszczek, Julian Weigl, Mario Gotze and Andre Schurrle only one week after the four Euro 2016 participants joined up with their team-mates following an extended vacation.

Add in the fact that head coach Thomas Tuchel curiously opted for under-19 midfielder Dzenis Burnic in central defence over senior options Marc Bartra and Mikel Merino, who played the second half, and it’s easy to see why Dortmund lacked cohesion against Athletic.

Also, as ever in pre-season, there was little regard for a test match in the training regimen, with Boris Rupert noting on the club’s official website that the Black and Yellows “had a 90-minute training session in the morning.”

Tuchel: “I had the impression that we were very tired today and struggled quite a bit.” #bvb https://t.co/54HfZaKdYk

— Stefan Buczko (@bvbawesome) August 9, 2016

Still, despite mentioning all those caveats, one can’t quite shake the feeling that this was a particularly dreadful performance, even on pre-season scales.

Dortmund looked erratic after a positive start—Schurrle could have put them in front after just three minutes after a nice pass from Gotze—and struggled immensely with Athletic’s intense pressure high up the field.

Playing in a 4-1-4-1 formation, Tuchel had opted for an attacking selection, with Weigl the lone midfielder behind a line of Christian Pulisic, Shinji Kagawa, Gotze and Schurrle. What promised offensive fireworks turned out to hurt the team time and time again, with the Liga side winning the ball early and often and going right at an exposed defensive third.

The central trio of Weigl, Kagawa and Gotze was most disappointing. The former has proved to be perfectly capable of manning defensive midfield by himself when on top form, but, obviously, he’s quite a way off his best at this stage.

Kagawa, in team training far longer than the other two, should arguably have been more of a help—despite it not being his strong suit—but, much like in the entire pre-season so far, his play lacked purposefulness. Returnee Gotze, finally, was responsible for the few moments of creativity around Athletic’s penalty box and rarely dropped deep to help out.

It’s no wonder, …

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