Thrilling Win over Bremen Shows Borussia Dortmund Haven't Given Up on Bundesliga

If one were to look for a sequence that defines Borussia Dortmund's mentality as the 2015/16 season goes into its final stretch, the 77th minute of Saturday's Bundesliga match against Werder Bremen is a good place to start.

In that minute, substitute Shinji Kagawa equalised the game at 2-2 after a brilliant move. Gonzalo Castro, who had earlier deflected a harmless shot into his own goal to equalise for Bremen, played a perfectly weighted through ball into the path of a charging Marcel Schmelzer.

The left-back got his head up just in time to see his Japanese team-mate making a run right through the heart of Bremen's defence and found him with a cutback pass. 

Kagawa slotted home but didn't turn around to celebrate his goal, which came in his 100th league appearance for the club. As the video below shows around the 2:20-mark, he went to get the ball and ran straight back to the halfway line, as if to say: "We're not done here!"

What the video didn't show is that two more players were ready to come on when Dortmund scored the equaliser. Assistant coach Arno Michels was already instructing Adrian Ramos and Christian Pulisic when the Signal Iduna Park erupted.

Now, it would've been easy for head coach Thomas Tuchel to change his plans, seeing as his team found the equaliser without the Colombian back-up striker and the 17-year-old American. But he didn't. Tuchel went for the kill.

Taking off the quiet Marco Reus and a full-back in Schmelzer, Tuchel sounded the charge with his substitutions. 

Like so many things he's done in his first year in charge of the Black and Yellows, his late changes against Bremen worked to perfection.

Once the two subs entered the pitch in the 80th minute, it took less than two minutes for Dortmund to go in front again.

Pulisic won the corner with a daring dribble, one of a few in his 10 minutes on the pitch, in which he ran rings around Bremen's left-back Janek Sternberg. Ramos got on the end of the corner played in by Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

Talk about a magic touch from the head coach:

The 42-year-old was quick to pass on the praise for his bold personnel moves late in the game, per the club's official website: "It really is an absolute blessing to have players who you can rely on, players who are desperate to get out onto the pitch; players who put their ego to one side as well as their annoyance that they didn't start. So I would like to pay a real compliment to the players."

It was Dortmund's third come-from-behind win in their last six league matches, which proves how hungry the Black and Yellows are.

Their win keeps them in shouting distance of table-toppers Bayern Munich, who still hold a five-point advantage after beating Eintracht Frankfurt earlier on Saturday. However unlikely a slip-up from the Bavarian giants seems—and they'd really need two—Dortmund are keeping up the pressure at the moment.

Of course, the Bremen match also showed why Dortmund are unlikely to become champions in May, conceding two goals from harmless visitors who were without their best striker in 37-year-old Claudio Pizarro, who had returned from international duty with Peru with a pelvic injury, is just not good enough.

It was a reminder of the first half of the season, where the Black and Yellows conceded 23 goals, compared to only eight for Bayern. Dortmund exited the Hinrunde trailing the Bavarians by eight points and probably left themselves too big a mountain to climb.

Having already clinched a spot in next year's UEFA Champions League on Saturday thanks to the loss of arch-rivals Schalke 04 at Ingolstadt, Dortmund will be guaranteed a runner-up finish if Hertha BSC lose to Borussia Monchengladbach on Sunday.

One could think they'll ease off and focus on the UEFA Europa League and the DFB-Pokal, but, on the evidence of Dortmund's Bundesliga form these days, one would be dead wrong.

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