Mats Hummels: “We play a lot of nonsensical and complicated football”
By Tushar Bahl
Mats Hummels did not pull any punches in his assessment of Borussia Dortmund’s performance in their 4-2 defeat to Rangers on Thursday.
Borussia Dortmund suffered a 4-2 defeat at home in the first leg of their UEFA Europa League knockout round playoffs tie against Rangers. The result leaves them with a mountain to climb in the second leg. And Mats Hummels believes that Dortmund make things way too difficult for themselves by playing complicated football.
In a post-game interview with broadcaster RTL, Hummels said that Borussia Dortmund will not be successful in the long run if they keep making things so easy for their opponents.
"“If you look at the Leverkusen game, we conceded 4 goals after unnecessarily losing the ball. Against Rangers, we conceded three goals like that. And for me, it’s clear what our problem is. The coach speaks about it often, but we don’t implement it in a lot of places.”“We play a lot of nonsensical football and thus make our opponents needlessly stronger, because we often don’t want the simple solution, but prefer to play football that is far too complicated.”“This way you win sometimes, and you lose sometimes, but you’ll never be successful in the long run.”"
Individual mistakes, poor decision making and sloppy defending were at the forefront once again as Borussia Dortmund conceded four goals at home to Rangers. The Scottish champions found the back of the net twice in each half, which meant that sublime finishes from Jude Bellingham and Raphael Guerreiro were only enough to give Dortmund a glimmer of hope heading into next week’s second leg.
The Black and Yellows have now conceded nine goals in their last two games at the Signal Iduna Park, which makes for very grim reading.
Next. Player ratings from Borussia Dortmund's 4-2 defeat to Rangers. dark
Things don’t get any easier for Borussia Dortmund over the next seven days. Marco Rose’s side will be at home once again on Sunday as they host Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Bundesliga. Dortmund will then make the trip to Glasgow next Thursday where they will look to achieve the impossible and overturn this deficit to make it through to the Europa League round of 16.