Borussia Dortmund’s early Europa League match in Norway Friday literally finished against all the odds.
The German club arrived in Norway early Thursday morning to face Norwegian football club Odds Ballklubb. From what looked like an easy match for Dortmund on paper, turned into a game of catch-up after Odd scored three unanswered goals in the first half. Thomas Tuchel was staring at his first loss in charge of Borussia Dortmund at 45’, but the boys in yellow came out on top to move on in the Europa League campaign.
Odds came out of the gates running and punished Dortmund for their lackadaisical defending and spacial awareness by scoring within twenty seconds of kickoff. Twenty minutes later, BVB was three goals down showing no promise of responding with a late first half goal.
Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang, Shinji Kagawa, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan all found their way onto the score sheet by the end of regulation with four goals among them. Mkhitaryan scored the deciding goal with 84’ gone, and increased his total amount of goals scored to seven in five appearances. It is no wonder why Liverpool are expressing interest in the Armenian player even after having a disappointing season last year.
Despite this early staged Europa league scare, Thomas Tuchel has yet to lose a match in charge of BVB. The 4-0 thrashing of their Revierderby rivals showed the Bundesliga that they are coming back with a vengeance after their rare 7th place finish last season. Dortmund have looked like serious title challengers thus far in the season, and are not to be overlooked even by Bayern Munich.
