Borussia Dortmund Keep Small Title Hopes Alive with Comeback Win over Augsburg

Of the many qualities Borussia Dortmund have shown this campaign, perhaps one of the most impressive is their ability to come back from losing positions. Sunday's 3-1 win over Augsburg was the eighth come-from-behind win of the 2015/16 Bundesliga campaign alone.

"We demonstrated an exceptional mentality and will to win," said head coach Thomas Tuchel after the game, per the club's official website, and his excitement over the performance is understandable considering the circumstances of the win.

The Black and Yellows not only played their sixth straight week with a midweek fixture, but they also had to make do without key performers such as Ilkay Gundogan, who missed the game with a bruised foot and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. The Gabonese stayed with his family after the death of his grandfather during the week.

That Dortmund pulled off another comeback win, despite the fact that one "could see that we not only had an intensive physical workload behind us, but also a huge psychological strain," as Tuchel put it after the game, again showed that they have the make-up of champions.

Of course, becoming champions isn't an easy feat in the Bundesliga, where Bayern Munich reside. The Bavarian giants won at the weekend as well, despite not looking overly convincing against Cologne just three days after their UEFA Champions League heroics against Juventus. 

Boris Streubel/Getty Images

Dortmund thus enter the international break five points behind Bayern, which means they still have a tiny hope of winning the title. At the very least, they'll give the table-toppers a run for their money. 

The Black and Yellows have won 26 of a possible 30 points in the Bundesliga since the turn of the year, having conceded only three goals across those 10 games, a club record, per Spox.com's Jochen Tittmar on Twitter (link in German).

They just won't go away, as the match at Augsburg's WWK-Arena showed. Captain Mats Hummels called it "proof again of how mature we are," per the club's official website, while goalkeeper Roman Burki noted: "We simply know what we are capable of. That is why we did not get nervous and we played our game."

The turning point of the game came immediately before the half-time break. As so often this season, it was Henrikh Mkhitaryan who provided that spark, as he finished a nice team move he had started himself:

"

#FCA’s back three had done well, but #BVB’s Mkhitaryan’s run caused a ton of chaos. #FCABVB pic.twitter.com/ZKvNC0XeFV

— Challengers Podcast (@ChallengersPod) March 20, 2016"

The Armenian's mentality at this time of the year sums up his team, as Matthias Dersch of local newspaper Ruhr Nachrichten (link in German) commented after the game.

Mkhitaryan didn't start well against Augsburg, misplacing a number of relatively easy passes and not completing many dribbles, but he kept chipping away until it finally worked.

As the compilation put together by Daniel Gubala below shows, the 27-year-old got better and better as the game went along:

That his No. 10 "was able to create dangerous plays on goal via one-on-one situations and began to create space that had not been there before" was the key to turning things around, as Tuchel pointed out after the game.

There was a sense of inevitability in the air in the second half, even though Dortmund didn't create too many clear-cut chances until substitute Gonzalo Castro scored their second goal.

Augsburg had done well with a fairly defensive approach—they played with five at the back until halfway through the second period—but it felt like a matter of time until Dortmund would convert their possession into something meaningful.

Converting their excellent Bundesliga season into a title will be much more difficult because of Bayern's strength, but the league leaders know they have a formidable foe in Dortmund:

Considering where the two clubs came from at the outset of the season, and the changes the Black and Yellows went through, that's already much more than anyone would've dared to hope.

Lars Pollmann is a Featured Columnist writing on Borussia Dortmund. He also writes for YellowWallPod.com. You can follow him on Twitter.