Tottenham 2-0 reactions: "Start passive, and it gets tough" | OneFootball

With the 0-2 defeat at Tottenham Hotspur on Tuesday evening, Borussia Dortmund's chances of directly advancing to the Champions League round of 16 are now slim. Because of this and even more due to their own performance in the key match against the Spurs, the mood in the BVB camp was anything but good.

"We didn't play well in the first half. When you go into the game so passively, without aggression and without fighting spirit, it becomes difficult," said coach Niko Kovac clearly at the press conference after the game – particularly with regard to not having physically matched an expectedly physical opponent as planned: "I'm not just annoyed by the result, but primarily by how we performed."

The fact that BVB could only win 36 percent of the duels was also made clear by Kovac: "That's damn little. You win nothing at this level with that," said the 54-year-old, who did mention a "harsh red card" against Daniel Svensson but didn't want to make it the defining issue.

The players don't sugarcoat anything either

Kovac received no contradiction from his players. Gregor Kobel was also far from sugarcoating the first 45 minutes: "Tottenham played with very high intensity, and I felt that we didn't cope with it as well as we should have. And then came the red card. Therefore, the first half was really nothing," stated the Swiss goalkeeper, who saw an improvement after the break but also a "too harmless" BVB.

Nico Schlotterbeck also criticized the performance before the break but didn't fail to mention that there was still a chance for a turnaround: "If we had scored the connecting goal, it might have become exciting again. But as it was, we deservedly lost."

Meanwhile, Julian Ryerson succinctly and aptly summed up the evening, which was very disappointing from Dortmund's perspective: "We wanted the win, but we are frustrated about the first half. I thought we actually did well in the second half with nine against ten. But the first was just not good. The aggression was missing."

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