Borussia Dortmund vs Wolfsburg: Post Match Comments
By John Harbeck
With Borussia Dortmund’s big win over Wolfsburg in the books, let see what the man of the match and others had to say.
We will start with the Borussia Dortmund manager Thomas Tuchel and how he felt about the match:
"“We managed to show a focused performance and keep the pace up. We managed to create many chances, while not allowing much at the same time. We’re very happy with that and I find that we were deserving winners. It was a good end to a very intense stint. We’re now looking forward to a week off, where can catch a breather. We will need this in order to head into the next five games with the necessary energy to reach our aims.”"
It is funny to me that the quality of the chances was probably lower than they were in the Benfica match, yet this time they went in. A couple of scrappy headers and the soccer universe giving a makeup goal in the Jeffery Burma own goal. Tuchel said the correct thing after the Benfica match and again yesterday.
Now we’ll have a stretch of players commenting on Lukasz Piszczek’s for Borussia Dortmund performance as well as the right back himself.
First Tuchel:
"“Piszczek has been in outstanding form in the last couple of weeks. He already played extremely well against Leipzig and Hertha. He was also extraordinarily strong against Benfica and it was the same today. It’s a great gift to have players like him on the team. I love him as a personality and as a human, not a day goes by without he arrives with a smile on his face to training. He’s a great family person and I have the feeling that he’s feeling very comfortable here at the moment. He is a great role model, as he embodies everything that BVB stand for. Hence I’m happy that he’s in such good form and shows that on a very consistent basis.”"
Then Marcel Schmelzer:
"“It’s really awesome. He is the second best goalscorer of the team now. Piszczu is a big weapon for us — especially whilst attacking dead-ball situations. He is very clever at positioning himself for second balls. I’m elated for him that he is so successful upfront this season – not least because I have him on my fantasy team.”"
"“It was very good and extremely important that we showed this kind of reaction to the past two games. In Lisbon, we squandered a whole host of chances so we wanted to improve on that today – and we did just that. Today we had a lot of chances too and we managed to convert three of them. It was great from the entire team.”"
Earlier in the season, Piszczek had been coming under fire for his level of play seemingly too slow down. As an outside back, he didn’t have the pace needed to keep up. Moving to a three-man backline, or staying in the back four against less than threatening clubs, Piszczek has enjoyed a wonderful last few weeks. His scoring has always been there for set piece chances, but recently the whole package has also emerged once again.
Finally, the captain had a few words about the south stand closure:
"“It was a strange feeling to play in front of an empty South Stand. It reminded me a bit of when we start training in the summer and only three sides of the stadium are full. It fell on the rest of the spectators to replace the missing 25,000 as best they could today. Fortunately we’ll be back to a full house at our next home game.”"
Whenever a stand is closed it looks strange and that held true against Wolfsburg. Thankfully it seemed, from the TV that the fans that were allowed to enter brought their best. If not the same level as usual, the fans still made the best of it.