Borussia Dortmund vs. Hamburg: Winners and Losers from Bundesliga
Borussia Dortmund beat Hamburg, 3-0, on Matchday 30 of the 2015/16 Bundesliga season on Sunday.
Coming off the emotional loss against Liverpool in the UEFA Europa League in midweek, head coach Thomas Tuchel made a whopping eight changes, with 17-year-olds Christian Pulisic and Felix Passlack among the starters.
Hamburg sat deep and waited for counter-attacking opportunities, failing to use the first of the match when Pierre-Michel Lasogga released Ivo Ilicevic.
Dortmund's first goal came out of the blue following a short corner routine, and it was Pulisic, of all players, to break the deadlock in the 38th minute. Adrian Ramos doubled Dortmund's lead moments before the half-time whistle.
The game was more or less over when Hamburg goalkeeper Rene Adler was sent off for a foul on Shinji Kagawa in the 52nd minute. Rushing out of his goal and the penalty box, the former Germany international wasn't his side's last line of defence, so the red card looked harsh at first blush.
Dortmund went on to control the game without too many difficulties, the DFB-Pokal semi-final against Hertha BSC on Wednesday on their mind. The Black and Yellows had a few chances to add a third goal before Ramos put the final nail in Hamburg's coffin in the 88th minute.
For the hosts, the game served its purpose: They'll travel to Berlin with a positive result in their bags but without any new injuries. Hamburg, meanwhile, drop to 12th in the table and are back in the thick of the relegation battle.
Here, Bleacher Report picks the winners and losers from this rather one-sided affair.
Winner: Christian Pulisic
1 of 5
It was a day of firsts for Dortmund's Pulisic. The 17-year-old made his first start in front of 81,000 in the Westfalenstadion, played his first full 90-minute match at the senior level and scored his maiden goal for the club's first team.
Playing on the left wing, the United States international looked lively throughout the match, even during the game's slow start, never shying away from taking players on. His goal sounded the charge for a much-improved Dortmund side, as Gonzalo Castro noted after the game.
Per Dortmund-based football writer Stefan Buczko, the 28-year-old midfielder told German broadcaster Sky after the game that the goal "set us free."
Impressing with his German skills in an interview after the game, Pulisic said that his team "were obviously sad about the last match, but the coach says that we have to keep on going."
Fellow 17-year-old academy product Passlack, who also started his first game at home, noted the following on the special day: "We will catch little sleep this night."
Loser: Sven Schipplock
2 of 5
The game could have gone in a completely different direction had Sven Schipplock not made a mockery of himself in the 36th minute.
Sven Bender carelessly gave the ball away to Schipplock, who had an open run on goal, with team-mate Nicolai Muller as a passing option to his right. Schipplock, however, took his sweet time, unaware of Mats Hummels closing down the angle.
Once he decided to release the ball toward Muller, it was already too late, as Hummels was able to make a tackle and get the ball to safety.
Only one minute later, Dortmund went in front and never looked back.
To be fair to Schipplock, he had only entered the pitch in the 35th minute after Lasogga suffered an injury, but that's hardly an excuse for his blunder. Per WhoScored.com, Schipplock didn't register a single shot in his 55 minutes on the pitch.
Winner: Mats Hummels
3 of 5
On the other side of Schipplock's mishap was Hummels, who once again was his side's best performer on the day.
Not only did he make the goal-saving tackle—which might well have been game-saving the way Dortmund were playing to that point—but he also assisted Pulisic's goal with a lovely weighted pass just a minute later.
Hummels, who's scored or assisted three goals in his last four appearances for Borussia Dortmund, per WhoScored, had fairly little to do against a harmless Hamburg side and could concentrate on his strong buildup play. Per the stat provider, he completed an astounding 91.7 per cent of his passes, including an impressive five accurate long balls.
Loser: Bruno Labbadia and Hamburg
4 of 5
Talk about a rotten day for Hamburg head coach Bruno Labbadia.
His side look surprisingly stale, considering they entered the game as Dortmund's bogey team, having won 10 points in the last four meetings with the Black and Yellows but still had the chance to take the lead through Ilicevic.
Then, striker Lasogga got injured with a clean tackle from Bender, substitute Schipplock missed the golden opportunity and Dortmund went in front, all in a spell of three minutes.
In the second half, goalkeeper Adler got sent off, which decided the game, as Labaddia said in his press conference, per Ruhr Nachrichten (link in German), before, late in the game, midfielder Albin Ekdal suffered what looked like a potentially serious knee injury. Hamburg had to finish the game with nine players.
The only Bundesliga team to feature in every season since the league's inception in 1963 is one of the big losers from the weekend, seeing as Augsburg, Werder Bremen, Darmstadt and Hoffenheim all won their matches.
Friday's derby against archrivals Bremen has suddenly become quite the six-pointer, and Hamburg will be without first-choice 'keeper Adler and, possibly, Lasogga and Ekdal.
Winner: Adrian Ramos
5 of 5
We'd be remiss if we failed to mention Adrian Ramos on this list. The Colombian did, after all, score his first brace for the Black and Yellows, pushing his tally for the season to a respectable eight goals.
The 30-year-old made the most of his opportunity, as regular first-choice striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was rested until the final quarter of an hour.
Ramos' first goal was a thing of beauty, as he made a fool of defender Cleber with a step-over before curling the ball into the far corner. His second was a true poacher's goal after Jaroslav Drobny spilled a Kagawa shot to the side.
Sebastian Wessling of local paper WAZ (link in German) rated Ramos as the best player on the pitch, with a grade that translates to nine out of 10.
Dortmund's back-up centre-forward continues to be hot in front of goal, having now scored a goal every 82.7 minutes in the league since the turn of the year, per WhoScored.
Lars Pollmann is a Featured Columnist writing on Borussia Dortmund. He also writes for YellowWallPod.com. You can follow him on Twitter.
