The Daily Bee: A Look at BVB’s Potential Europa League Candidates, and More Injury Updates

Good morning, everyone. Happy Friday!

Donyell Malen out with an infection

According to Ruhr Nachrichten, Donyell Malen is out with an unspecified “infection,” for the second time this season. I’m assuming it’s not COVID, because it seems the club would have specified as such if it was. Hopefully the infection isn’t serious, and Malen is able to re-join the squad soon. He will, however, likely miss tomorrow’s match against VFL Bochum.

Good news for Julian Brandt and Thorgan Hazard

Here are two pieces of very good news. Thorgan Hazard, who had COVID, and Julian Brandt, who suffered a scary head injury last weekend against Bayern, have both recovered from their respective ailments and, according to Marco Rose, could be options to start against Bochum.

Unfortunately, he did also reiterate that although Gio Reyna has returned to training, he probably won’t be able to play against this calendar year.

Europa League Updates

Since the Europa League is now the most important competition in the world, I thought I’d provide a few updates on how different teams are doing. I won’t go into the results of every group, but some notable teams making it into the Round of 16 from the group stage include Bundesliga clubs Bayer Leverkusen and Eintracht Frankfurt, West Ham United, Olympique Lyonnais, and Monaco. While BVB might be one of the top clubs in the competition, it definitely will not be a cakewalk.

Dortmund won’t be able to automatically waltz into the Round of 16. Because they finished third in their Champions League group, BVB will have to make it through a playoff round against one of the teams that finished second in their Europa League group. This is the full group of clubs BVB can draw:

Rangers FC

Real Sociedad

Napoli

Olympiacos

Lazio

Braga

Real Betis

Dinamo Zagreb

The Daily Buzz

Which of the above listed clubs would you like to draw? Which would you want to avoid?