The Borussia Dortmund ultras were not happy.
Six days after their desolate derby defeat away at rivals Schalke, the Dortmund players warmed up in front of a huge banner reading: “You have failed to understand the significance of the derby – you failures!”
“No desire, no passion, no courage, no team!” read another banner along the front of the Yellow Wall. “Nobody embodies Borussia Dortmund as little as you!”
Dortmund’s performance in Gelsenkirchen last week was the tipping point for many fans. In the face of their aggressive and penetrative local rivals, Dortmund were slow, lethargic and weak, and frustrated their supporters with their aimless sideways passing.
But that changed on Saturday as BVB responded in vintage fashion with a 4-0 hammering of high-flying Bayer Leverkusen at the Westfalenstadion, a performance which was both familiar and yet so unfamiliar.
“Rarely has a team shown two such extreme faces in the space of a week as Borussia Dortmund,” wrote Kicker magazine on Monday. “Tired, insipid and heartless against their biggest rivals, but lively, combative and full of fantasy against Leverkusen.”
And the player best described by those last three adjectives was an English teenager: Jadon Sancho.
"You haven't understood the significance of the derby - you failures!"
[via @MatthiasDersch] #bvb
Super Sancho
The 18-year-old has by no means made a bad start to his Bundesliga career; it’s not been an easy season for anybody associated with the Black & Yellows, who have been unceremoniously dumped out of Europe twice and sacked a manager while still trying to come to terms with the traumatic attack on their team bus last year.
But on Saturday, Sancho truly arrived. Less than a minute after wasting a golden chance to give Dortmund the lead, the Englishman made amends by sweeping the ball into the bottom corner for his first goal in professional football.
In the second half, it got better as Sancho lead wave after wave of Dortmund attacks, bobbing and weaving his way past three Leverkusen defenders before laying the ball off to Mario Götze, whose shot was cleared off the line.
The best was yet to come. In one exquisite movement on the run down the left wing, Sancho brought down Manuel Akanji’s long ball with his heel before setting up Maximillian Philipp for Dortmund’s third.
“Dortmund celebrate the return of spectacle football,” enthused Kicker, singling out Sancho and Marco Reus as “grand masters of the art of dribbling at speed.” And the two combined in the final stages as Reus headed home Sancho’s pinpoint cross for Dortmund’s fourth.
Extra push
Dortmund were running riot, and the players admitted that the ultras’ banners had had an effect.
“When you come into the stadium and see how angry the fans were, it gives you an extra push,” said midfielder Julian Weigl. “We all realised that it was time to pull our fingers out,” added goalscorer Philipp.
But the afternoon belonged to Sancho. The cynics will point out that he could have won a Premier League winner’s medal in Manchester, but what’s it worth when you don’t play?
Sancho is now playing regularly for Borussia Dortmund, he’s scored his first professional goal in front of the biggest standing terrace in Europe and added two assists in front of 81,360 fans in Germany’s biggest stadium.
The medals will come.
