Borussia Dortmund's poor start to the season continues with defeat to Mainz
Clear chances weren’t a theme early on, but a moment of madness from Emre Can opened the game up as he lunged recklessly at Lee Jae-sung just outside the box. That resulted in a straight red card and a free-kick from which the Korean himself only managed to head too close to Alexander Meyer.
With Lee having netted in each of Mainz’s previous two home games against Dortmund, it was a warning that BVB should have heeded – but they didn’t, and Lee got it spot on several minutes later when an overhit cross from the left fell to Anthony Caci for the South Korean to score with a close-range overhead kick.
Sadly for Lee, ‘spot on’ became ‘on the spot’ just four minutes after he scored, when he gave the ball away and brought down Guirassy inside the area as Dortmund broke forward. Regular penalty taker Can was by now taking an early bath, but Guirassy deputised well and powered a shot into the bottom-left corner despite Robin Zentner guessing correctly.
The parity was short-lived though, as on the stroke of half-time, Danny da Costa went on a run and squared across the face of goal for Jonathan Burkardt to bury the ball into the top-right corner.
With Mainz sitting just two points above the Bundesliga’s relegation zone and being winless in three league games, few in attendance would have expected them to play as positively as they did in the first half, and they carried that momentum into the second.
That led to them getting that all-important two-goal cushion when Phillipp Mwene found Paul Nebel inside the box, resulting in the midfielder scoring via a deflection.
Dortmund now needed a miracle to get anything, and a trio of would-be heroes from the bench included Donyell Malen, who was seeking his fifth goal of the campaign – but neither he nor any of the other substitutes provided much in the way of inspiration. If anything, Mainz looked the likelier party to net the afternoon’s fifth goal, with Nadiem Amiri having a sight of the net and failing to truly test Meyer.
With Mainz sensing that their hard work was done already, chances began to dry up, ensuring that there would be no late drama to prevent the 05ers opening up a five-point gap from the bottom three. As for Dortmund, this result adds further misery to what was already the club’s worst start to a Bundesliga campaign on the road since the 1989/90 season.
Flashscore Man of the Match: Lee Jae-sung (Mainz)