Mainz mishap evokes more painful memories for misfiring Dortmund

Not them again, already. Mainz already defined Borussia Dortmund’s 2023 once and now, as the year winds down in deflating fashion in Westfalen, they might be in danger of doing so again. Sunday’s traditional Christmas gathering at Signal Iduna Park, with carols and spectacle in front of a 73,056 crowd, may have meant a moratorium on grumbles and concerns for a team that has gone from touching distance of history to sleepwalking through winter. Yet 48 hours later at the same venue the worries were back in triplicate.

“It’s just not working at the moment,” said the captain, Emre Can, after more dropped points on Tuesday, and there could be no arguing with it after Dortmund extended their current Bundesliga run to just one win in eight - and no wins in the last four. Seven months on from the last visit of the 05ers, a game that will haunt Dortmund dreams for decades as the Bundesliga title slipped through their horrified fingers, it was not comparable in terms of loss. The draw with Mainz in early spring had been ruinous and this one was a symptom, rather than a cause. This second draw underlined, however, how difficult the lingering effects of the first continue to be.

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If Mainz were again the harbingers of doom – and what a week of bringing back painful memories it has been for those of a BVB persuasion, with now-Augsburg goalkeeper Finn Dahmen denying them three points on Saturday having already kept them at bay on that fateful day in May – they were just the scenery in this nativity. The drama manufactured was all Dortmund’s own, just as it had been in that desperate climax to their title dream.

Mainz are struggling, with Bo Svensson gone and Jan Siewert shepherding the team in the interim. They arrived in 16th place, the relegation playoff berth, and they were almost spectators early on. Julian Brandt’s delicious dipping free-kick to break the deadlock was scant expression of the extent of the home side’s dominance, with Jamie Bynoe-Gittins and (after the Brandt goal) Marcel Sabitzer pinging aluminium.

As with most years in post-Jürgen Klopp era, though, an act of self-sabotage always feels as if it is in the post. The concession of a scruffy goal to Sepp van den Berg from a set piece just before the interval sent the teams back to the changing rooms on level pegging, and the doubts set in. There were opportunities to snatch a much-needed win for Dortmund before the end, but it wouldn’t really have been deserved on the balance of second half play. “It’s an unsatisfactory end to an unsatisfactory first half of the season,” Brandt summarised bluntly afterwards. Can’s comment on Dortmund’s current stasis had not been a shot at the coach, but there is little escaping with whom the buck for listless, shapeless performances stops.

The last time BVB dumped a coach mid-season was when Lucien Favre was shown the door in mid-December 2020 after a 5-1 humiliation at home to Stuttgart, which ushered in the first era of Terzić, keeping the seat warm for Marco Rose’s arrival the following summer. The manner of that particular implosion in front of the Yellow Wall brought long-term angst to a crescendo, but it is worth noting that Favre’s team was only two points adrift of the top four when he was removed. Today Dortmund are six points behind fourth-placed Leipzig. That Germany is currently in pole position to be one of the two nations receiving five Champions League slots in next season’s reformatted competition is no source of comfort yet.

Terzić can argue that his record of strong second-halves of the season bodes well; remember that his team were sixth at last year’s Winterpause and still went into the final game of the season with the title in their own hands, as well as his winning of the DfB Pokal, hammering Leipzig in the 2021 final, in his interim period. There is empathy too from upstairs, with unconditional backing from the coach thus far from CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke, who has underlined the emotional difficulty in attempting to get past the ultimate heartbreak of last season, not to mention losing their best player in Jude Bellingham. Watzke has consistently emphasised that Terzić will be the coach for the duration, “full stop”.

Werder Bremen 1-1 RB Leipzig, Dortmund 1-1 Mainz, Hoffenheim 3-3 Darmstadt, Union Berlin 2-0 Köln, Eintracht Frankfurt 2-1 Borussia Mönchengladbach, Heidenheim 3-2 Freiberg, Stuttgart 3-0 Augsburg, Leverkusen 4-0 Bochum, Wolfsburg 1-2 Bayern Munich

He, sporting director Sebastian Kehl and advisor Matthias Sammer will meet to discuss the future this week, and there is no certainty yet that they will call time on Terzič. Yet even if Watzke is forced into a decision he would prefer not to make, the problems go deeper. There is pressure too on Kehl, whose recruitment has done little to address the imbalances of the squad or its weak areas. Yet a lack of joined-up thinking in recruitment predates his arrival in summer 2022. The sense that everyone’s seen this before were reinforced by the disappointing TV ratings for the Mainz game, with a modest 2.9 million viewers on Sat.1 for the final free-to-air game of the year the channel’s lowest audience for a live game this season.

Terzić’s appearance on the pitch during Sunday’s Christmas show, walking on with his daughters to You’ll Never Walk Alone, underlined everything that he is. A good club man, there with his people, where he belongs. If he does go, it will hurt, for him and for the club. The problem is that the next incumbent will not have a magic wand to fix it all, and BVB know it.

Talking points

• All hail Leverkusen, top and still unbeaten going into Christmas after a first part of the season even the unruffable Xabi Alonso never would have dared dream of. They signed off for 2023 with a 4-0 demolition of Bochum, giving strong clues to how they might cope without a clutch of players, led by Victor Boniface, going off to the Africa Cup of Nations in January. Patrik Schick started in place of Boniface and helped himself to a hat-trick. “With this quality behind me, with Florian [Wirtz] and Jonas [Hofmann], it’s very easy to score goals,” Schick told Sky. “It’s a dream for strikers.”

• As against Stuttgart, Bayern got through their game at Wolfsburg despite a cast of walking wounded – including Raphaël Guerreiro, who “spent all night on the toilet” according to Thomas Tuchel, but gave a sterling performance in midfield. Harry Kane’s long-ranger cracker (Bundesliga goal No 21) turned out to be the winner after Max Arnold unexpectedly pulled it back to 2-1, so the champions had to dig in after the interval, and they did. “I think many players are happy there’s a small break now,” said Manuel Neuer with some understatement.

• Stuttgart, meanwhile, go into mini-hibernation in third after swatting aside Augsburg 3-0, with Serhou Guirassy netting his 17th of the season.

• Three cheers too for Heidenheim, with the Bundesliga first-timers in ninth after another thrilling comeback win, twice recovering to beat Freiburg. “It’s sensational,” said coach Frank Schmidt of his side’s 20-point haul, significant in a season where the bottom six are thus far going along at a point per game or less. “Nobody would have believed we could do it.”