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Dortmund jettison Ousmane Dembélé worries as Peter Bosz has instant impact

Christian Pulisic and Mario Götze excelled in a ruthless, full-throttle victory at Wolfsburg which made mincemeat of the predictions after a summer of turmoil

Andy Brassell

Monday 21 August 2017 10.47 BST

Everybody loves a shock result on the opening day of the season. What was so unusual as the Bundesliga got back to business was that Borussia Dortmund’s comprehensive victory at Wolfsburg on Saturday afternoon – last term’s third-placed finishers winning at the team that ended third-bottom, having to win the dreaded relegation-promotion play-off to save themselves – felt as if it was one of them.

Given that this summer was supposed to tidy up some loose ends at Westfalen, it’s been far from a smooth ride for Dortmund and their fans over the last two-and-a-bit months. After the expected but clumsily handled exit of Thomas Tuchel, Nice’s miracle worker, Lucien Favre (who previously performed similar feats at Hertha Berlin and Borussia Mönchengladbach), was expected to step in. There was one small problem. The Côte d’Azur club’s president, Jean-Pierre Rivère, wouldn’t play ball, and having had months to plan for the Tuchel succession, Dortmund’s CEO, Hans-Joachim Watzke, and sporting director, Michael Zorc, were left with an unsightly gap to fill, and quickly.

To their credit, they did so. The arrival of Peter Bosz from Ajax was, though, slightly out of left field. On the surface, his work developing talented youngsters in Amsterdam and his credo of a highly energetic attacking game seemed like Dortmund all over. He was, in personality and approach, a long way from Favre, though. It didn’t smack of having a plan.

The coming months will tell us about Bosz’s suitability for the job but both fans and detractors of the appointment alike must have sympathy given the problems that the Dutchman has had hanging over his preparations for the campaign. There was the lengthy injury list, including Julian Weigl, Raphaël Guerreiro and Marco Reus, augmented with the club captain, Marcel Schmelzer, and André Schürrle in pre-season. Then, there were the real difficulties.

The top scorer, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, was candid with the club at the end of last season. Turning 28, he wanted to try out something else. Dortmund could deal with that. He had provided excellent service since arriving from Saint-Étienne in 2013 and after a 40-goal season, they would never be able to sell him for more. Yet a move didn’t materialise – partly because of the emergence of Kylian Mbappé all but finishing his dream of going to Real Madrid, and perhaps partly because while the goals flowed last season, his influence on games as a whole began to wane.

The leader of the attack was now Ousmane Dembélé, the teenager who Aubameyang had, as a fellow French speaker, taken under his wing when he arrived in summer 2016. Blessed with pace, vision, dribbling ability and genuinely two-footed, Dembélé increasingly pulled the strings as the season went on – and showed up in the big moments, such as when his sensational strike won the DfB-Pokal semi-final at Bayern Munich in April, paving the way to winning the trophy in Berlin in Tuchel’s final game.

So if the Neymar sale rocked Barcelona’s pre-season, it didn’t do much for Dortmund’s either. When breaking through at Rennes, Barça tracked Dembélé extensively, with their sporting director, Robert Fernández, watching him in person on a number of occasions. Barça made an offer, but Dortmund made the more convincing argument for development and playing time.

The rate of that growth has been such that few are in any doubt that yes, Dembélé really could do a decent job of stepping into the Brazilian’s shoes. The rest is well-documented – the now 20-year-old skipping training, and the club suspending him, with Watzke heavily criticising Barça for their role in turning his head.

Yet in the week leading up to this game, even if the issue is still unresolved, there was a sense that the rest of the squad had pulled together. In fact, Dembélé would have enjoyed himself a lot more at the Volkswagen Arena – where he scored his first Dortmund goal last September – than sitting at home fretting about a possible transfer.

Dortmund were sensational, fun to watch and ruthless, making mincemeat of pessimistic predictions. The hunger and tempo associated with Bosz was in full throttle – notably, Nuri Sahin told Sky afterwards that “we were super prepared” – and there were a number of positives. Christian Pulisic, in Dembélé’s right-wing role, was excellent, scoring the opener and laying the third on a plate for Aubameyang, who looked fresh and engaged.

Mario Götze, praised by his coach as “a special player”, was excellent on his comeback from a serious metabolic problem, being involved in two of the goals. Maximilian Philipp had a successful debut on the left and Marc Bartra scored his first goal for the club, a delicious curling shot from a tight angle, which he dedicated to the victims of the Barcelona attacks.

On the other side, Wolfsburg had come in with fresh signings and new optimism, but were absolutely rotten. Wolfsburger Allgemeine called the 3-0 loss “flattering” after their local team had 29% of possession and not a single shot on target. They defended poorly and when they won the ball back, they punted aimless balls forward for Mario Gomez to chase, largely bypassing their new central midfield of Ignacio Camacho and Riechedly Bazoer. “Dortmund surprised me,” said the Wolfsburg coach, Andries Jonker, underlining the fact that his players seemed as poorly set as Dortmund’s were ready. “They were really good today.”

His countryman Bosz on the other hand, could even afford a few kind words for Dembélé, whom he eulogised in his post-match press conference as an exceptional talent. By dealing with the present effectively, he has made the future something for others to worry about.

Hapless_Hans wrote:I'm ready to declare Bosz a fraud.

Looking forward to completely destroy BVB and their weak ass 45m high line next week.

Bosz is basically the Dutch klopp

Firenze wrote:Just blew a 4-0 lead. is he done?