Opinion: Borussia Dortmund should allow Maximilian Beier to start alongside Serhou Guirassy in attack

Taking the games against Brugge in the Champions League as an example, Şahin decided to start Donyell Malen as a striker up front instead of Beier, which was a bit perplexing from my point of view. We’ve often discussed that Malen, as a player, is not suited to playing as the sole striker up front for Dortmund. Much of his success before moving to the club was in a front-two partnership at PSV Eindhoven.

This idea for a front-two partnership also speaks to Beier who partnered Croatian international Andrej Kramarić up front for Hoffenheim’s last season to great effect. If Dortmund are to push forward with a sole striker up top, however, Beier is the better choice to the likes of Malen up front in any case as he has the height and skill set that allows him to fill the role if necessary.

That being said, considering Şahin and Dortmund are still in the stages of trying to figure everything out and implement the new coach’s tactics, there’s no reason that Şahin couldn’t try to implement a two striker system with both Beier and Guirassy up-front. As we’ve already mentioned, Beier excelled for Hoffenheim in this system, as did Guirassy at Stuttgart. Guirassy partnered Deniz Undav up front to create a record-breaking strike partnership for Stuttgart, which should be the only proof necessary that Guirassy himself could excel in partnership with Beier.