Pokal Match Recap: Despite late push Borussia Dortmund eliminated 2-1 by Bayern Munich

The first half of the year is now over and with it our Pokal hopes. Defending champions Borussia Dortmund are now out of the Pokal after being eliminated by Bayern Munich in the round of 16. The final score of the game was 2-1.

The first half was disastrous for BVB. Dortmund couldn’t hold possession at all the entire half and they paid for it. In the 11th minute Boateng scored the opening goal after our back line gave up after a rebound. While we did have some counters, most of them were quite unimaginative. Stoger made a tactical sub after the half-hour mark switching Bartra for Mo Dahoud. The sub almost immediately paid off if it wasn’t for Yarmolenko missing one of the easiest chances of the match. The second Bayern goal of the half came from Muller jogging past Marcel Schmelzer and laying it in past Burki. Marcel seems to always give up against Bayern and has been the centerpiece in more then a few of the Bavarians goals against us the past two years. The half ended 2-0.

The second half began a little more evenly for BVB. Both sides had some close cahances on goal. Kagawa especially shined bright in the second half but was not able to make much of the chances he had. Stoger made his second sub in the 56th minute taking Raph off for Schurrle. Raph played real bad this match but subbing on Schurrle, who has not played much this year, was an odd choice. The game really heated up in the last 20 minutes as Dortmund started to control the game entirely. In the 77th minute Yarmolenko scored Dortmund's lone goal. While we had a lot of chances to end the game nothing came of any of them. Stoger’s last sub Isak had a shot to end the game but bumbled his first touch.

Even though we are out of Pokal there is a lot of positive things we can take out of the last 20 minutes of this game. It was probably the best stretch of BVB football since early September. We ended the game with 5 players under the age of 23 and all of those youngsters shined. Burki was clearly our man of the match as he prevented this 2-1 from being 5-1 with some world class saves. All in all not the best way to enter the holiday season but at least we have a lot more hope then we did before Bosz was sacked.