Kovac wants to crown the season start after two clean-sheet wins | OneFootball

Current situation

BVB look back on a satisfying few days. After the deserved 2-0 win against Hamburger SV in the Bundesliga opener, they followed it up on Tuesday evening with a routine 5-0 victory over HEBC in the DFB-Pokal. The one major sour note, however, was the serious knee injury suffered by new signing Giannis Konstantelias (torn ACL) in his first Bundesliga match.

Now, on Saturday, BVB face their first away game of the 2026/27 Bundesliga season, which will take the Black and Yellows to the Kraichgau region. TSG Hoffenheim suffered a bitter 3-2 defeat away to 1. FC Köln in their opener. Christian Ilzer’s side led twice in Cologne, but still ended up empty-handed after 90 minutes. While BVB can cap off their start to the season with a third straight clean-sheet win, Hoffenheim are looking to avoid a complete misfire at the start of the new campaign.

Speaking ahead of the match, BVB coach Kovac stressed the importance of the task in Sinsheim: “The start to a season is always very important, you have to get rolling. That applies to every team, and of course to us as well. We’re going to Sinsheim to win the game.”

Squad

Giannis Konstantelias, Emre Can (both recovering from torn ACLs) and Nico Schlotterbeck (ankle) are all long-term absentees and will not be in Borussia’s squad. The latter at least returned to the training pitch this week. Samuele Inacio is also unavailable due to suspension after a red card.

Otherwise, Niko Kovac was able to report that three more players recovering from injury recently made important progress and were at least able to train partially with the team again. In addition to the two 17-year-old young professionals Mussa Kaba and Enzo Dos Santos, that also applied to Ramy Bensebaini, who had been sidelined for around two weeks with bruised ribs.

Kovac also suggested that new signing Ethan Nwaneri could make his competitive debut for BVB. “He is a fit player who could theoretically, and maybe also practically, play straight away. His technical ability is very good, we’ve already been able to see that in training. I’m very satisfied,” the BVB coach said of the strong first impressions made by the young Brit.

Opposition

TSG Hoffenheim are coming off their best season in eight years in 2025/26 and returned to European competition. Hoffenheim also won the most recent meeting with Borussia Dortmund, claiming a 2-1 victory in April thanks to a penalty from TSG record goalscorer Andrej Kramaric in the eighth minute of stoppage time.

BVB head coach Niko Kovac is determined to get revenge for that defeat five months ago, but at the same time warned of the opponent’s quality and expressly praised the work of fellow coach Christian Ilzer: “You can see how important it is to give someone the time to implement certain things. To have one, or even several transfer windows to change and reshape certain things. The football played in Hoffenheim is very intense, very aggressive and vertical.”

The 54-year-old described Hoffenheim as “a team that can run a lot and defends aggressively.” Although TSG lost their first match in Cologne, Kovac is convinced: “Games against Hoffenheim are always close, it comes down to the small details and to who can impose their game more than the opponent. I hope that will be us. After the good start against HSV, we have the wind at our backs and we want to make use of that too.”

A 0-0 is virtually out of the question

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