Newcastle United waited 20 years to play in the Champions League again and it feels safe to predict that it will not take them two decades to return, but an adventure threatens to end early. As Borussia Dortmund did a double over Eddie Howe’s team, the destroyers of Paris Saint-Germain could see their own hopes in ruins. The casualties from the group of death might include Newcastle, and if so, this may go down as a game too far, rendering their task too tough.
They had beaten Manchester United and Arsenal with weakened teams but there was no treble. Dortmund had been eviscerated by an Englishman, after Harry Kane’s hat-trick in Der Klassiker, but not an English club. Newcastle found it altogether harder than Bayern Munich to prosper at the Signal Iduna Park. If Newcastle are a buying club and Dortmund a selling one, the Bundesliga side may derive particular pleasure from the identity of two of their three goalscorers over 180 minutes that have transformed the group: Felix Nmecha, bought when Jude Bellingham was sold, at St James’ Park and Niclas Fullkrug, perhaps a belated replacement for Erling Haaland, in the rematch.
