Thomas Tuchel’s in-form Dortmund side travelled to Berlin on the back of their most recent impressive result – a 4-0 Champions League Round of 16 win over Benfica. However, they faced a tough challenge against a Hertha side with the best home record in the Bundesliga.
Dortmund struggle against man-oriented defence
Despite dominating possession, as they would for most of the game, Dortmund struggled to create chances in the first half. This was partly down to Hertha’s man-oriented defence. Heavily man-oriented defending can sometimes be difficult to beat for positional play teams such as Dortmund, as having a zonal structure for attacking can make it seem difficult for players to create separation from their markers (e.g. by moving into another zone) without breaking the structure (although it can certainly be done, as we will see in the 2nd half).
Initially when Dortmund started their buildup phase, Hertha did not press them aggressively. They would stay in a fairly passive and compact shape, looking to minimise the space between the lines. The striker, Ibisevic, would usually orient himself towards Weigl, or try to position himself between Weigl and Castro, so he could access either, where necessary. When Ibisevic marked Weigl, a midfielder, usually Darida or Skjelbred, would take Castro, although sometimes they stayed more passive, and Castro was free to receive the ball.
Hertha waited for a trigger to press more aggressively – usually, a backwards or sideways pass to a defender which a Hertha player had good defensive access to. Dortmund learned this the hard way in the 11th minute, when Schmelzer sent a pass back to Ginter, the central-defender, whose loose touch was pounced upon by an advancing Ibisevic, who then dribbled the ball into the box and squared the ball for Kalou, presenting him with an easy tap-in. When they pressed, Hertha could match Dortmund’s 3+2 (3 defenders + 2 defensive midfielders) buildup structure man-for-man, and Dortmund struggled to find solutions to escape such situations.
The problem of opposition sides marking Dortmund’s defensive midfielder(s) out of the game is not an unfamiliar one for Thomas Tuchel. For a while now, teams have been minimising Weigl’s influence by marking him either directly or through cover shadows. Recently, Tuchel attempted to amend the issue by having a second midfielder, usually Castro or Guerreiro, move into the second line to receive the ball from the defence. Hertha were able to counter this, with the man-oriented defending talked about here. When Dortmund’s midfielders are neutralised in this way, it makes the team very disconnected. The only way to progress is down the wings (more on that in the next paragraph), or through longer passes from the defenders, looking for players behind the opposition midfield. This is of course very difficult, as the passes need to be of a very high quality, and an interception is often very affordable for the opposition, due to the length (and thus travel time) of the pass.
One slightly more successful buildup method, although only seen on a couple of occasions, was on the left side through Guerreiro, who was often free when Haraguchi moved towards Schmelzer or Castro. When he received the ball, he would look for the diagonal pass inside to a midfielder or forward, and look to combine from there. This strategy led to the couple of (low quality) half-chances Dortmund had in the first half. This is very similar to Dortmund’s buildup idea against Leverkusen last week, which has already been covered very well on Spielverlagerung. I recommend that you read their aspect analysis to get a better understanding of this particular buildup method that Dortmund have been using recently.
Hertha’s similarly ‘unclean’ buildup
Hertha also struggled to build play cleanly from deep. They used the goalkeeper heavily in possession. From here, they would attempt the common strategy (Salida Lavolpiana) of having the centre-backs drop deep and wide, and the defensive midfielder also dropping in. This was very easy for Dortmund to combat with their 5-2-3 structure against the ball – the front three simply played in a man oriented fashion against Hertha’s CBs and DM, with Kagawa in the centre, closing down the goalkeeper to force him long while keeping the defensive midfielder in his cover shadow. Hertha were a bit more successful when a second midfielder dropped to receive the ball, making it 2v1 in Kagawa’s area, with Dortmund’s CMs reluctant to press aggressively.
Overall, in the first half, both sides struggled to build possession in what would conventionally be considered a ‘clean’ way. This was slightly less of a problem for Hertha, as they had some decent moments using direct passes to Ibisevic, and playing from his knock-downs. Hertha’s best attacks came in transition though, usually due to individual mistakes by Dortmund, who made a surprising amount of these. Weigl, for example, gave the ball away in potentially dangerous counter-attacking positions a couple of times, which is unusual for a player of his quality.
Tuchel adjusts at half-time
Given Dortmund’s problems in the first half, Tuchel recognised that it was necessary to make a tactical change for the second half. His idea was to move Guerreiro inside, so that he occupied a position in the left half-space when in possession. Kagawa remained in the #10 position, and Castro moved to the right. Schurrle would now stick to the left touchline, in order to provide the necessary width now that Guerreiro had moved inside. With this adjustment, Dortmund now had what was effectively a 3-4-3 diamond shape when in possession.
The change was successful in helping Dortmund to progress the ball through the midfield – something which they could not do in the first half. Firstly, due to the coverage of the pitch they now had, with Castro and Guerreiro in the halfspaces and Kagawa at #10, their ball-circulation was more effective. Not only did they have good zonal occupation, but due to the closer proximity of the midfielders they could use rotations to create separation from their markers, while still occupying the relevant spaces. There were one or two very impressive moments where Kagawa would drop deeper, then towards the left, meanwhile Guerreiro was moving on the blindside of his marker, into the vacated #10 position, in order to receive a pass through the lines.
The positioning of Castro and Guerreiro effectively pinned the Hertha midfielders back. In the first half they could bind themselves to Weigl and Castro without worrying too much about the spaces behind them, as they were mostly unoccupied. Now, with Dortmund’s new structure, they had to stay in passive positions due to the pro-active positioning of Dortmund’s midfielders, and the movement between the lines. Indeed, Darida in particular sometimes seemed not to know whether he should move forward to mark Weigl, or take care of Guerreiro. Castro still occasionally dropped into Dortmund’s second line to support buildup, but this time he was positioned wider, in the right halfspace, giving the outside option for Bartra.
On the subject of Weigl, he was still the player that Ibisevic mostly oriented himself towards. Because of this, and because of the deeper positions that Hertha’s midfield now had to take up, there was space for Ginter to advance into and find a forward pass. It created a dilemma for Ibisevic – should he stick with Weigl, Dortmund’s primary playmaker who will dominate the game if given space? Or should he instead pay more attention to stopping Ginter driving forward with the ball from defence? Regardless, he was substituted in the 65th minute.
Schmelzer also benefited from the changed structure. In the second half, he seemed to play higher up and slightly wider than in the first half – more like a conventional left-back, even though he was still part of a back-three. As a result of his more advanced position, he was able to find some nice diagonal passes into the #10 space in the second half. This is what led to Dortmund’s only goal – Schmelzer’s low pass, flicked on by Guerriero, who then combined on the edge of the box with Kagawa and the goalscorer Aubameyang, to make it 1-1.
Conclusion
Hertha scored the winning goal from an impressive free-kick from Plattenhardt, which was won by the substitute Weiser, with a good diagonal dribble in front of Dortmund’s box to draw the foul.
Usually, when scorelines appear not to fairly reflect the performance of a team (due to luck, or teams not taking their chances), we can look to stats such as xG (expected goals) to give us another angle on whether the winning team did actually perform better. However, in this match, I feel Dortmund’s xG of 0.9 (per Caley Graphics and 11tegen11) is slightly misleading, as there were occasions during this match where Dortmund had the chance to shoot, but didn’t, or narrowly missed getting on the end of a cross which would’ve created a high value shot. Dortmund had not only dominated possession in the 2nd half (74% per WhoScored, I recognise that possession is not a good measure of performance, but feel it is relevant here), but also had a lot of touches inside the opposition box. Perhaps this match, therefore, shows us some of the weaknesses of xG as a metric, even if it does remain as one of the best predictive metrics out there. Above all, it shows us that football is about being clinical. This is also not to take away from Hertha’s performance, which was strong, especially in the first half – where they proved why they are one of the Bundesliga’s best teams.
In terms of where this result leaves the two teams – it represents a missed chance for Dortmund to open up a gap between themselves and Hoffenheim (they drew with Freiburg this weekend), which would’ve given them some security in their position. For Hertha, they gain ground on Hoffenheim, in the fight for the 4th place Champions League qualifying spot.