Strange pattern in BVB’s football under Kovac | OneFootball

BVB’s 2–0 win away at VfB Stuttgart was a particularly clear, though by no means the only, example of what Jonas Ortmann in the WAZ described as a peculiar “phenomenon” that Borussia Dortmund have developed into under Niko Kovac in footballing terms. By this, the commentator means the following striking characteristic of BVB’s performances.

Borussia Dortmund have picked up two points more than FC Bayern Munich in the second half of the season and would now be on course for the German championship if the season had only started in the new year. The Black and Yellows recorded nine wins, plus just one draw and one defeat. On top of that, they have now equaled a Bundesliga record with thirteen consecutive matches scoring at least two goals of their own.

But how these successes have come about is something “no one can really explain,” Ortmann says. In Stuttgart, BVB had not registered a single shot on the Stuttgart goal until Karim Adeyemi made it 1–0 in the 90+4th minute; until then, the attack had been almost completely nonexistent, as the press also noted. And yet, the three points still ended up going back to Westphalia as they secured another win.

Statistical analyses such as those by understat.com show that BVB have collected a full thirteen points more than would actually have been expected based on the course of the games and the quality and number of chances created. So this is a rarely seen level of overperformance that Kovac and his team are producing on Bundesliga pitches.

Photo: IMAGO

BVB race from one success to the next: reasons unclear

In the first half in Stuttgart, BVB at times “thumped the ball forward blindly” and showed no sign of any systematic build-up play. Nevertheless, they just keep picking up points. That pushes Kovac’s average with BVB up to a, given this kind of football, hard-to-believe 2.19 points per Bundesliga match.

Anyone now waiting for explanations of how all this is working, even though Borussia Dortmund so rarely convince or dominate, will be waiting in vain. Ortmann emphasizes at the start that, in principle, no one can explain these wins. Even so, he also concedes that one important building block is that the defense generally performs solidly, as was the case throughout the full match in Stuttgart. Then one or two successful attacking moves are enough to win a game. But this has nothing to do with a dominant style of play; Kovac, after all, stands for a “pragmatic approach.”

Restoring an identity to Borussia on the pitch was, not least, one reason why Nils-Ole Book has now been brought in — and there is apparently a lot of work waiting for him.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.