It’s safe to say Bild aren’t taking Borussia Dortmund’s 3-0 defeat to Tottenham lightly.
Son Heung-min opened the scoring for Mauricio Pochettino’s side thanks to a wonderful cross from Jan Vertonghen. The Belgian defender then added the second himself before Fernando Llorente finished things off.
There were signs before the match that a wave of criticism was on the way if BVB lost, with Jadon Sancho and Abdou Diallo forgetting their passports, and Ömer Toprak losing his boarding pass, already being presented as unprofessional and a sign of all that is wrong with football.
Three goals later and it’s a full-on-crisis.
Bild have an article saying Dortmund players invited a celebrity hairdresser to their Wembley hotel the night before the match, and the insinuation is they weren’t entirely focused on the match against Tottenham.
In a separate article, Bild go with a headline saying: ‘Favre has a
discipline problem’
It’s Lucien Favre’s ‘first crisis at BVB’ and the team are really missing Marco Reus. The passport issue is brought up again, and the hairdresser, and Bild report that players have been late for training recently.
And now we come to the player ratings.
Bild’s player ratings are very different to what you’re probably used to. Whilst most ratings are out of 10, or sometimes 5, Bild use the German school grading system.
1 means very good, 2 is good, 3 is average, 4 is passable but still lacking, 5 is deficient and 6 is insufficient. A 6 is the lowest possible grade and, taking it back to the school grades, it means that not only were things not up to standard, but there was even a failure to understand the basics.
Now, we completely understand them hammering the Dortmund team, given the mood the German sport media are in, but that four Tottenham players were given a 4 is a little mean.
Chelsea fans may not want to see what Christian Pulisic got.
