2024-10-01 21:46:27
BVB wants to improve on the 3-0 win in Bruges at the start of the Champions League with a win against Celtic Glasgow. Caution is advised: the Scots are in top form.
Not a European heavyweight, but a possible stumbling block – Borussia Dortmund goes into the second Champions League game against Celtic Glasgow with due respect. “We have worked intensively with them. They are really good,” warned Sebastian Kehl about the supposedly easy task on Tuesday evening (9 p.m./Amazon Prime and in the live ticker on t-online). Coach Nuri Şahin rates the “Bhoys” just as highly as the sports director: “To call them outsiders wouldn’t be fair. That will be a challenge for us.”
It’s not just a look at the table of the reformed competition with all 36 teams that helps the Dortmund coach’s argument. After all, after the furious 5-1 win against Bratislava, the Scottish double winner is in second place behind leaders FC Bayern, ahead of Leverkusen (3rd) and Dortmund (4th).
Celtic’s impressive record in the domestic Premiership alone with six wins from six games and 20:0 goals should be warning enough for Borussia. Since the 3-3 draw against Aberdeen in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup on April 20th, which coach Brendan Rodgers’ team won on penalties, there have been successes in 15 competitive games without exception.
One person who has particularly played his way into the limelight: Nicolas Kühn. In 2019 he won the Fritz Walter Gold Medal as the greatest German talent in his year. He moved to Glasgow in January via Bayern, Ajax, Aue and Rapid Vienna. Kühn works well at Celtic and shot down Manchester City in a friendly in the summer (read more about that here). The right winger has already scored an impressive 13 points in the first nine competitive games this season.
He scored five goals himself and also provided eight assists, one of them in the 5-1 win against Slovan Bratislava. On Tuesday he wants to shake up the shaky BVB defense and draw even more attention to his big goal: “I want to be in the national team at some point.” He said that in an interview with t-online before the European Championships this summer (read the whole interview here).
“My statistics in the youth national teams over the years speak for themselves. I also always loved wearing the German jersey. When we were playing against relegation at Aue in the second division, I once said in an interview, “The next goal for me is to play in the Champions League and return to the DFB team,” said Kühn. He has already achieved one thing with Celtic – will he achieve the other goal soon?
Despite Kühn and Celtic’s current form: At BVB they are hoping for a similar sense of success as the 3-0 win at the premier class opener in Bruges two weeks before the new edition of the last Champions League final at Real Madrid. However, this requires a more concentrated performance than in the arduous 4-2 dress rehearsal on Friday evening in the Revierderby against VfL Bochum, when an embarrassing defeat was threatened after being 2-0 down.