Borussia hand Bundesliga title to Bayern Munich with Mainz draw. Bayern Munich wins the Bundesliga after Mainz and Borussia Dortmund draw.
Not a single person went home after that. The Borussia Dortmund players and fans performed a ceremonial ceremony that felt funereal, almost sacred in its crafted penitence, as they stood silently in front of the Yellow Wall. We, the players, humbly ask for pardon for grating cheese over our faces for the last ninety minutes. You can apologize to us, the fans, for grating your faces with a cheese grater. And we see the extent of your sacrifice in your bloody cheeks and filthy parts of the grated face. Added silence for a moment. Edin Terzic, the coach, was sobbing.
While all was going on, Bayern Munich was enjoying a more customary championship celebration around 60 miles south on the A1. the traditional, accepted kind—Bayern style. For Dortmund, however, there would be no one else to blame this time. Not Uli Hoeness, Robert Lewandowski, or Pep Guardiola. Not the star athletes who kept moving on to greener pastures, the bigger clubs that enticed them, or the financial injustices that made them possible.
Borussia hand Bundesliga title to Bayern Munich with Mainz draw
Bayern Munich’s Thomas Müller celebrates with his teammates and the Bundesliga championship trophy after the team’s dramatic victory. Bayern Munich grabs a last-ditch victory before the club’s executives are fired.
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This time, they knew their suffering was entirely self-designed, self-conceived, and self-manufactured when the final whistle blew with Bayern leading and Dortmund second again. You realize how challenging this sport can be, Terzic added. “We fell short by only one goal. It stings so bad.
There were bitter tears and confessions the next day, and eventually, there will be bitter memories. The commemorative championship T-shirts will be kept in a drawer unworn. It is safe to call off the parade. Its absence is filled with emptiness, a void, and unfulfilled needs. How long will it be before twelve years without a title? These are the games that leave permanent scars on entire generations. They will never forget this breezy afternoon in the early summer when Dortmund arrived, saw, but did not conquer.
They were so close, too. They were in need of a victory and came close. They needed Köln to win against Bayern, and they nearly did. They held this object in their hands for eight glorious minutes, and that will hurt. However, how does a club collapse after winning its previous 11 home games? How can elite footballers squander such huge opportunities and make so many crucial mistakes? How does a group forget who they are?
Despite everything that transpired, the championship was lost in those nine erratic first-half minutes when Dortmund forgot they were league leaders and switched to carrying the most priceless diamond in the world. They were expecting a coronation, not a battle, so they were taken aback when Mainz, who had nothing left to play for, refused to give up and scored twice on free headers from Andreas Hanche-Olsen and Karim Onisiwo.
Sébastien Haller missed a penalty in the interim, which may have triggered Dortmund to go into complete panic mode. Mainz had more opportunities. Unexpectedly, Julian Brandt lost a five-on-two opportunity. Bayern was already up 1-0 at this point, and Dortmund’s every move was met with screams of panic, tensed muscles, and the screaming chagrin of 81,000 simultaneous swear words. Don’t open the champagne too soon is the first party hosting rule. You will seem ridiculous trying to put the cork back in the bottle because it is deceptively difficult.
Simply put, the second half vanished in a puff of smoke. Haller had a two-yard miss. Marco Reus, a club legend, missed a six-yard header. And Haller followed suit. Then Gio Reyna, the fill-in, followed suit. While everything felt low-probability at this time, there were several low-probability long shots. With 20 minutes left, a loose ball raced to Raphael Guerreiro, who hammered the ball in from 18 yards, giving this foul pint of foul crosses, optimistic knockdowns, and crazy ricochets a momentary moment of clarity.
