Chapter 37 Honor or Pressure?

Hoffman's goal opened up the situation for Dortmund's players. In the 86th minute, Dortmund added another goal.

This time, Royce was tripped to the ground after dribbling the ball into the penalty area. The referee sentenced Brunswick to death.

The West End was filled with cheers.

Penalty kick!

This goal will definitely go in. If it does, the victory will be sealed! This game has been won, and Dortmund will reach the top of the league standings with this victory!

Then Royce personally took the penalty kick and lived up to expectations and kicked the penalty kick into Brunswick's goal. Dortmund led Brunswick 2:0 at home.

Including the players, everyone's hearts that had been hanging for more than 80 minutes finally fell back into their stomachs.

But God doesn't seem to want Dortmund to win the game so easily.

In the 89th minute, Brunswick got a corner kick opportunity. This was Braunschweig's third corner kick of the game.

The corner kick flew to the goal. Mark, who returned to defend in front of the goal, jumped up and tried to header the ball to clear the ball, but he accidentally pushed the football into his own goal!

"Ah! Ah! Ah...the ball went in! Mark...an own goal! Mark Wagner scored an own goal! This is terrible!"

Goalkeeper Weidenfeller was caught off guard by Mark's header and could only watch the football fly into the goal from the near corner, unable to do anything.

Braunschweig players celebrate a goal.

Mark, however, held his head and looked frustrated.

Originally, the two-goal lead was pretty solid.

His own goal immediately put the team into a dangerous situation...

He blamed himself, felt guilty, and was also a little scared.

Mark's panic was justified. This own goal immediately made the atmosphere at the scene tense again - including injury time, there are still a few minutes until the end of the game. If the opponent scores another goal in these few minutes... …The cooked duck can even fly!

After entering injury time, Klopp used his last substitution of the game. He replaced Mkhitaryan with Marvin Dutsch.

In this game, Mkhitaryan, who had an ankle injury before, got a chance, but perhaps because he had been injured before and had not practiced well with the team, Mkhitaryan's performance was not very good in the game. Well, I can only say average.

And Marvin Dusch is a 19-year-old forward, a product of the Dortmund youth academy. With Lewandowski gone, he may have more playing opportunities this season, but whether he can truly establish a foothold in the first team and become a useful addition to the lineup depends on whether he can Take a chance.

Klopp replaced Mkhitaryan with Dusch not only to use substitutions to consume some time in the last few minutes of the game, but he also hoped to use this substitution to put pressure on Brunswick and let them Unable to launch a massive counterattack against Dortmund's goal in the remaining time.

If they really want to do this, then Dortmund's counterattack will not be vegetarian.

He was just reminding Brunswick to think about what was behind them when they wanted to equalize the score...

This substitution was somewhat effective. In the last few minutes, Braunschweig did not cause any trouble for Dortmund's goal. In fact, if the goal had not been Mark's own goal, Braunschweig would have had no chance to score. of.

Finally, at the end of the game, Dortmund defeated newly promoted Braunschweig 2:1 at home.

Although this game was won, it was not easy for Dortmund to win.

The Bundesliga in the new season will definitely not be smooth sailing. Even the newly promoted team can cause them so much trouble. If they switch to a mid-range team with a slightly stronger victory, they might really defeat Dortmund at the Weststadt.

Klopp admitted at the press conference after the game that his team did not perform well enough, but he also believed that victory was more important to Dortmund than anything else.

With the victory in this game, Dortmund has accumulated six points from two consecutive victories and ranks first in the league standings.

However, there are as many as four teams with six points like them. Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, Mainz, and Werder Bremen all have six points, ranking second to fifth.

Dortmund is only ranked first by virtue of its goal difference advantage. This first place is very unstable.

Of course, for football matches, the result is more important than anything else. As long as you win the game, it doesn't matter how you win, or how difficult it is to win.

This ranking illustrates this point.

At the same time, Dortmund's 2:1 home victory over Eintracht Braunschweig was Dortmund's 20th consecutive victory.

Last season, they surpassed Inter Milan's 17-game winning streak with 18 consecutive victories, becoming the team with the longest winning streak among the five major European leagues.

This season, they continued their efforts and won two consecutive rounds, extending this new record to 20 games.

While Klopp's team won the championship, they were also setting a record that is difficult for future generations to match.

In the third round of the league, Dortmund welcomed Werder Bremen at home. After this game, it would take five or six days for the fourth round of the league, but Dortmund was different. They played on August 27, that is, here. Three days after the first league game, they will play the fourth round of the league in advance, because on August 30, they have another game in Prague, Czech Republic - there will be a European Cup match with Chelsea, the winner of last season's Europa League. contest.

This season is indeed a new and severe test for Dortmund.

Because of next summer's World Cup in Brazil, the league schedule is very intensive, and the Champions League and domestic cup schedules will also be adjusted accordingly. The load on the players will be greater than in normal seasons. In December, the Dortmund team will go to Japan to participate in the Club World Cup. For this reason, they will miss several domestic league games, and the missed games will be arranged in the next time. If they can continue If they reach the semi-finals of the Champions League, this will cause Dortmund to have a very dense and compact schedule in the new season.

Such a dense schedule is a severe test for the physical fitness of the players, and it is also a severe test for the team's injury control.

Now that the league has just begun, the team has suffered injuries one after another. Gundogan has a waist injury, Mkhitaryan has an ankle injury, Piszczek is also injured...

After winning the league championship for three consecutive years, Dortmund's championship team seems to be a bit exhausted.

After creating a record 20 consecutive victories, Dortmund's glorious surface also hides such a crisis.

In the game against Werder Bremen, Dortmund continued to rotate, with Svenwind and Aubameyang sitting on the bench.

Because Piszczek's injury has not healed yet, Grosskreutz once again used his versatile skills and played in this game as a guest right back.

In this game, Dortmund also played very hard at their home court. Neither side scored in the first half.

Ten minutes into the second half, Mark Wagner broke the deadlock for the team.

The goal came from Grosskreutz's cross assist.

But after leading by one goal, Dortmund did not take advantage of the victory to pursue it. It was not because they didn't want to, but because they were a little unable to do so.

The two sides began to mobilize their troops continuously from the 66th minute. Werder Bremen was naturally unwilling to lose the game by just one goal. They also thought they could equalize or defeat Dortmund on the road.

Commentator Marcel Leif kept mentioning the winning streak created by Dortmund. He thought that maybe this record had burdened the Dortmund players. Some of them didn’t know how to play and were thinking about things during the game. Thinking too much.

Fortunately, in the end Dortmund withstood Werder Bremen's crazy counterattack at the last moment and won another difficult victory at home 1:0.

"The game is over! Dortmund won again! No matter what the scene was or what the process was, Dortmund always won the game. The 21st consecutive league victory! While they set a new record, they also continued to accumulate experience. The weight of the burden... Look at the tired expressions of the Dortmund players. The league has just begun and they have won three consecutive victories, but the players' expressions are not relaxed..."

There were some close-ups of Dortmund players in the broadcast. Indeed, there was no excitement after 21 consecutive victories. On the contrary, many people looked like...how should I say? To put it nicely, you will be calm and not shocked by honor or disgrace. To put it bluntly, it would be called confused, as if he has no idea whether he can continue to win like this in the future.

At the post-match press conference, Klopp did not admit that the 21-game winning streak had put pressure on the team.

"No, no one would complain about winning too much. We are pursuing victory in every game, so it doesn't matter whether we have records or not. The pressure will not increase because of too many wins or consecutive wins. The players are just a little tired..."

Immediately, a reporter asked: "But the season has just begun, and it has not been a double match a week recently. Does this mean that Dortmund's pre-season training and going to China to play commercial tour games resulted in the team's physical reserve not being done well?"

Klopp declined to answer the question.

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