Pre-season friendly preview: Borussia Dortmund vs Athletic Bilbao

Borussia Dortmund will be back in pre-season action on Saturday as they take on La Liga side Athletic Bilbao in St. Gallen, Switzerland. 

The start of the 2021/22 season is now just two weeks away, and Borussia Dortmund are intensifying their pre-season preparations. The Black and Yellows are in Bad Ragaz for a week-long training camp. And they will continue their preparations with a pre-season friendly against Athletic Bilbao on Saturday.

Borussia Dortmund have taken a 28-man squad to Switzerland. And the majority of those players should be available to play on Saturday, with the exception of injured trio Dan-Axel Zagadou, Soumaila Coulibaly and Marcel Schmelzer.

Erling Haaland is in line to make his first appearance of the pre-season. While new signing Abdoulaye Kamara could make his Borussia Dortmund debut. With the majority of the Euro 2020 participants still on break, a number of players from the U-19 and U-23 teams will also get a chance to impress.

With no first team centre-backs available, Lennard Maloney, Antonios Papadopoulos and Albin Thaqi from the U-23s team will feature in defence on Saturday. None of the Borussia Dortmund players spent more than 45 minutes on the pitch during the first two pre-season friendlies. But Marco Rose will likely want to give his first-team players some more playing time on Saturday, as he looks to get them back into match rhythm.

It will be interesting to see if Rose decides to go with a two-striker system against Athletic Bilbao. He went with a 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 formation for the first two games. But with three strikers now in the squad, we could potentially see a change in formation.

Athletic Bilbao have a number of talented players in their ranks. And they will no doubt offer Borussia Dortmund a tough test on Saturday.

Expected Borussia Dortmund Starting XI vs Athletic Bilbao: Kobel – Passlack, Papadopoulos, Maloney, Schulz – Dahoud, Brandt – Knauff, Reyna, Reus – Haaland