Ramy Bensebaini will sit out two DFB-Pokal ties. Borussia Dortmund got off lightly.
The sports court called it rough play on Tuesday. Nobody would knowingly defend a 90th-minute lunge through Ismael Saibari when the game had already gone, though the punishment could have been a good deal heavier than what arrived.
Because the red came in the Supercup, Bensebaini serves the ban in the cup rather than the Bundesliga. He misses the trip to HEBC Hamburg next Tuesday and a possible second round in late October. Saturday, he plays.
What the ban costs BVB
HEBC sit five divisions below Borussia Dortmund. Their own ground falls short of DFB safety standards, so the tie moves to a borrowed stadium across town. Would Kovac have picked a 31-year-old defender for that anyway?
Bild reported that Bensebaini went to hospital after the Bayern game for checks on a bruised rib, so the honest answer is probably not. The suspension takes away a rotation call that the head coach may already have made.
Hamburger SV on Saturday evening is the fixture that would have hurt. He's available for that one. The timing could hardly have fallen better.
The hole in the defensive squad behind him is the worry
Nico Schlotterbeck and Emre Can are both still unavailable, which leaves the back three thinner than any BVB supporter wants in the opening week of a season. Waldemar Anton and Joane Gadou flanked Bensebaini against Bayern.
Gadou is a nineteen-year-old still finding his feet in senior football, though the club have already asked him to hold down one flank of a back three. That's a heavy load to hand a young player in August.
Bensebaini adds very little to the starting eleven. FotMob logs 1,038 Bundesliga minutes for the Algerian last season at a 7.49 average rating. Two goals, no assists, four yellows. That's a squad player's return rather than a starter's.
Kovac has been leaning hard on men who are currently in the treatment room, because the summer recruitment all went into midfield and attack instead of the back line.
BVB Buzz put the whole back line among the lower marks on the night against Bayern. The left-sided defender came out bottom of them.
He still starts against Hamburg. Schlotterbeck's return can't come soon enough.
Dortmund's head coach said his side took more risks once Giannis Konstantelias came on. Risk is one thing with eleven men. Bensebaini removed that option with his rush of blood and subsequent lunge.
Two games missed in a competition where Dortmund are overwhelming favourites is the sort of punishment a club with title ambitions can absorb without a second thought. Ask any BVB supporter whether they'd swap that for a league ban. You already know the answer you'd get.
Verdict: A two-game cup ban is the best possible outcome BVB could have hoped for. Kovac should treat it as a free week's rest for a defender who was carrying a knock anyway.
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