Borussia Dortmund’s Sebastian Kehl laments slow start in Bayern Munich demolition

“Tuchelball” has not been synonymous with strong starts. However, the latest edition of Der Klassiker proved to be an exception.

Bayern Munich started the game on the front foot and never looked back. After 10 minutes Die Rekordmeister found themselves two goals to the good, courtesy of Dayot Upamecano and Harry Kane.

Borussia Dortmund’s poor start didn’t go unnoticed by sporting director, Sebastian Kehl. The former Dortmund stalwart explained (as captured by Tz) that it was too easy for Bayern to stamp their mark on the game in the opening phases.

“We started the game very badly, were 2-0 down after nine minutes. Bayern were very fresh at that stage, very aggressive. It wasn’t a good performance from us. We made it easy for them in many situations. We punished ourselves within a very short space of time, we never really adjusted to the many counter-attacks throughout the game.” said Kehl.

Kehl was understandably frustrated as Dortmund failed to beat Bayern at home since the tail end of 2018. The Dortmund sporting director addressed the prolonged string of poor performances against Bayern, touching on his team’s mentality: “I don’t know if it was a mental thing today. The course of the game was very difficult for us.”

Kehl encouraged his side to take the defeat in their stride and look forward.

“We don’t have to ruin everything now, that everything is in ruins. But we weren’t on a level playing field today. Today it was a quality issue in terms of speed, approach and aggression. It was consistently too little,” Kehl remarked.

While it may be a tricky time to be a Bayern supporter; one can be glad that they didn’t have to watch their side get thrashed 4-0 in front of their home supporters. All in all, a difficult result for BVB ahead of a brutal set of fixtures.