More Crucial Errors Highlight Dortmund’s Champions League Exit; Lose 3-1 to Monaco

MONACO — For the second leg in a row, Dortmund were the inferior team to Monaco as Monaco, led by teenage sensation Kylian Mbappé, hung up three goals on Dortmund to secure their spot in the UEFA Champions League semi-finals.

For Dortmund, making the quarterfinals is still a success and not advancing to the semi-finals shouldn’t be held against the team, especially in light of what has happened in the past week. Additionally, Monaco is currently sitting atop the Ligue 1 table and has been, without a doubt, the best French team in Europe this season.

Getting into a bit of match recap, Dortmund, like the title suggests, gave up three to Monaco, two of which came in the first twenty minutes, the first courtesy of Mbappé who slammed home poorly controlled save by Roman Bürki in the third minute of play.

The looks on the faces of the Dortmund players were all similar, as the reality of a Champions League exit was setting in. Fourteen minutes later, the Dortmund heads hung even lower as Matthias Ginter failed to mark Radamel Falcao in the box and Falcao jumped in front of Ginter to head Monaco into a comfortable 2-0 lead.

Following the Falcao goal, Thomas Tuchel decided he had enough Erik Durm (failed to stop the cross to Falcao) and subbed on Ousmane Dembélé in the 27th minute. Yes. You are reading that correctly.

After the second half was underway, Dembélé proved to be a wise substitution as he marvelously dribbled around multiple Monaco defenders and whipped a perfect outside of the foot cross to Marco Reus, who tapped in the only Dortmund goal of the game.

Just when you thought Dortmund could get back into the match, Łukasz Piszczek had yet another crucial error. Piszczek coughed up the ball to Monaco midfielder Thomas Lemar, who dribbled in and swung in a cross to substitute Valère Germain, who slotted home the dagger to send Dortmund out of the Champions League.

Crucial errors at the wrong time were the problem again for Dortmund in this match, as all three of Monaco’s goal were a result of a Dortmund error. Whether it was Burki not handling a save correctly, Ginter not marking the lone Monaco player in the box, or Piszczek turning over the ball in the midfield, Dortmund handed Monaco all of its goals.

In saying this, Monaco deservedly won this game and deserved to go through. However, Dortmund didn’t make it difficult for them as all six of their goals were a direct result of an error by Dortmund. For Dortmund fans, this is excruciatingly painful as Dortmund has the attacking talent to win matches. But, as we saw over the past two legs, defensively things are shaky.

With all that has occurred in the past week, Dortmund can still hold their heads high. With their lives being affected by terrorism a week ago, playing through the mental and emotion pain is nothing but admirable and is so regardless of the results on the field.

If that explosion never happened last Tuesday, things would have been different. But, the better team overall advanced and Dortmund was unfortunately not that team.