Chapter 177 League and Champions League

Dortmund's match was played a day earlier than Bayern Munich's. So after Dortmund crushed Eintracht Frankfurt at home, reporters peppered Guardiola with questions at the pre-match press conference for Bayern Munich's home game against Freiburg, asking for his thoughts on Dortmund's two dominant victories.

Guardiola rubbed his nose and said, "To be honest, I'm not very concerned about them. I only care about my own team. We just need to do our own thing well."

He said this with great confidence, seemingly not taking Dortmund seriously.

Of course, his Bayern Munich did have the capital to do so.

In the subsequent match, Bayern Munich also defeated Freiburg 4-0, the score exactly the same as Dortmund's.

It was a response to Dortmund's recent aggressive pursuit.

Now, with twenty-one rounds of the league played, Bayern Munich still sits at the top, four points ahead of Dortmund, and with a huge advantage in goal difference—they have scored fifty-seven goals but conceded only nine, a goal difference of forty-eight.

Only nine goals conceded makes them the team with the best defense.

Everyone says that offense wins applause, but defense wins championships.

From this simple principle, one can understand that teams with good defenses are usually champions.

So everyone felt that if Bayern Munich still couldn't win the league title, it would definitely make many people doubt their lives...

On the other hand, Dortmund has conceded twenty-three goals so far this season.

This is the most goals they have conceded in the same period in the last four seasons.

Last season, they conceded nineteen goals in twenty-one rounds.

In the 2011-2012 season, they conceded only fourteen goals in twenty-one rounds.

In the 2010-2011 season, they also conceded only fourteen goals in twenty-one rounds.

Clearly, Dortmund's defense is not as good as before, which has a lot to do with their incomplete back line.

In terms of goal difference, Dortmund is at thirty-seven, eleven goals behind Bayern Munich's forty-eight.

So, what does Dortmund have to rely on to catch up with Bayern Munich and compete for the championship?

Their performance this season is not without its merits. At least so far, they are the team with the most goals in the Bundesliga, having scored sixty goals in twenty-one league rounds.

This is also the most goals they have scored in the same period in the last four seasons.

In the previous three seasons, they scored fifty-three, fifty, and forty-four goals respectively in twenty-one rounds.

Although their performance has been fluctuating this season, Dortmund's efficiency in attack is still very high. The departure of Lewandowski and Götze has not diminished Dortmund's attacking performance, and Zhou Yi's outstanding performance is naturally inseparable from this.

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After the match against Eintracht Frankfurt, there was one more round of league games, followed by the Champions League knockout stage.

For this reason, the upcoming twenty-second round of league games seemed very delicate.

Because Dortmund's first leg of the Champions League knockout stage was an away game, and it was in distant and cold St. Petersburg, Russia—Dortmund's opponent in the Champions League round of sixteen was Zenit St. Petersburg.

Among the sixteen teams, Zenit St. Petersburg may not be the weakest, but it can be considered "one of" them.

The only team possibly weaker than them was Olympiacos of Greece.

However, this does not mean that Dortmund was lucky to draw a good opponent.

This had to take into account the weather in St. Petersburg and the time of the round of sixteen matches.

On February 25th, high-latitude St. Petersburg was still very cold and snowy.

And Dortmund had just been hit by a blizzard in Istanbul, which caused the match to be interrupted, postponed for a day, and almost resulted in a comeback, preventing them from qualifying from the group stage.

So Dortmund had become very sensitive to the weather.

Everyone was paying attention to the weather in St. Petersburg. According to the weather forecast, St. Petersburg would be cloudy for the next few days, but no one knew what the situation would be a week later.

The weather is always changing.

They could only pray, pray that they would not encounter another blizzard like the one in Istanbul.

At the same time, because of the long journey to St. Petersburg, it would inevitably affect Dortmund's plans in the league.

In the twenty-second round of the league, Dortmund was also playing away, their opponent being Hamburger SV.

Hamburger SV had been performing very poorly this season. After twenty-one rounds of the league, they had only accumulated sixteen points, ranking seventeenth, second from last. They were on the verge of relegation.

So with almost half of the league remaining, Hamburger SV had already entered a state of fighting for survival.

They had to fight game by game, point by point. Only in this way could they ensure their successful survival.

This match was also at their home stadium, so it would not be easy for Dortmund.

If Dortmund held back in the league in order to prepare for the Champions League, then it was very likely that they would lose to Hamburger SV.

Once they lost to Hamburger SV, competing with Bayern Munich for the league title would truly become a pipe dream—Bayern Munich would be challenging Hannover 96 away from home. Although it was an away game, with the difference in strength between the two teams, it would not be difficult for Bayern Munich to win away.

At that time, the gap between the two teams would be widened to seven points, and with Bayern Munich's stable performance this season, it would really be difficult to surpass them.

But what if they put in too much effort in this league match, causing the team to perform poorly when playing against Zenit St. Petersburg away from home?

The Dortmund club probably hadn't thought about defending the Champions League title, but being eliminated in the first round of the knockout stage after being the defending champion was not only a matter of face but also related to income.

For many teams, the appearance fees and various bonuses from the Champions League are very important sources of income.

Although Dortmund is a giant club, they wouldn't look down on the Champions League appearance fees and bonuses...

Of course, they hoped to go further in the Champions League.

This dilemma would ultimately have to be decided by head coach Klopp.

Klopp didn't hesitate much and decided to send out his main players in the league.

The reason was actually very simple—the Champions League match was later, and the league match was earlier. What the Champions League match would be like was unknown, and it was not certain whether the league would have an impact on the Champions League.

It would be foolish to sacrifice the present for an uncertain future.

So Klopp did not intend to let the team suffer losses in the league because of an uncertain future. The first thing to do was to win the league, and then consider the Champions League.

What if they gave up the league and didn't win the Champions League either? Wouldn't that be a complete waste of effort?

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Before the match against Hamburger SV, Dortmund announced their eighteen-man squad, and all the main players were in it.

Facing Hamburger SV, Klopp also seemed very cautious. He said at the pre-match press conference: "I am not concerned about the Champions League match right now. Our opponent is Hamburger SV, so I am only focusing on the league opponent."

Hamburger SV had recently suffered a seven-game losing streak, and their morale had fallen to rock bottom. But they had changed their head coach, with the original Dutch coach Van Marwijk being dismissed as a result, and Slomka taking over.

Hamburger SV's hiring of Slomka was both to find a coach to put out the fire and more than just to find someone to put out the fire. They gave Slomka a long-term contract until the end of June 2016, which would remain valid even if the team was relegated to the second division this season.

At the same time, they naturally valued Slomka's experience in leading teams to successful survival—in the second half of the 2009-2010 season, Slomka took over Hannover 96 and miraculously completed the survival task in the last round.

The Hamburger SV management obviously hoped that Slomka would bring the same miracle to Hamburger SV.

There is a saying in football, "changing coaches is like changing knives." There are many examples of teams that have fundamentally improved their results after changing their head coaches.

Whether this is superstition or a change brought about by the freshness of a new coach...

This phenomenon does exist.

Klopp certainly had to worry that his team would become a sacrifice after Hamburger SV changed their knife.

Recently, Dortmund had won two consecutive league matches by large margins, and the team's morale was high. Klopp had to worry that the team would be too excited, even somewhat arrogant and underestimating the enemy.

Hamburger SV, ranked second from last, seemed to have no right to be taken seriously by Dortmund, ranked second from first...

Moreover, Hamburger SV was also suffering from large-scale injuries before this match—Bouy and Diekmeier were absent due to illness, and Iličević and van der Vaart were absent due to injury.

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Klopp's worries were not without reason.

After the match began, after only three minutes, Hamburger SV's Jiráček got the ball on the left side of Dortmund's penalty area, turned and shot, the ball just missing the target.

This was the first shot of both sides, and it was Hamburger SV who fired the first shot.

Then Dortmund took the initiative, but Hamburger SV's defense was always solid, and Dortmund never had any good chances.

"It seems that changing the coach has indeed given Hamburger SV a new look. Facing Dortmund, Hamburger SV is not at all at a disadvantage!"

Klopp on the coaching bench looked serious.