Not them again, already. Mainz already defined Borussia Dortmund’s 2023 once and now, as the year winds down in deflating fashion in Westfalen, they might be in danger of doing so again. Sunday’s traditional Christmas gathering at Signal Iduna Park, with carols and spectacle in front of a 73,056 crowd, may have meant a moratorium on grumbles and concerns for a team that has gone from touching distance of history to sleepwalking through winter. Yet 48 hours later at the same venue the worries were back in triplicate.
“It’s just not working at the moment,” said the captain, Emre Can, after more dropped points on Tuesday, and there could be no arguing with it after Dortmund extended their current Bundesliga run to just one win in eight - and no wins in the last four. Seven months on from the last visit of the 05ers, a game that will haunt Dortmund dreams for decades as the Bundesliga title slipped through their horrified fingers, it was not comparable in terms of loss. The draw with Mainz in early spring had been ruinous and this one was a symptom, rather than a cause. This second draw underlined, however, how difficult the lingering effects of the first continue to be.
