Erling Braut Haaland has continued his world-class goalscoring form in 2021. The 20-year-old has 23 goals and six assists from 23 appearances for Dortmund this season despite a muscle injury setback in late 2020.
Haaland remains a shining light for BVB and his form reads eight goals and three assists in nine games in all competitions this year. However, things have been a bit less rosy for his team.
Dortmund sacked Lucien Favre in December and have been inconsistent despite Edin Terzić taking over in the interim. The Signal Iduna club have three wins and three defeats in their last eight Bundesliga games.
This is far from an expected challenge on Bayern Munich’s domestic dominance as they now stand 16 points from the Bavarians in sixth place.
The Yellow and Black have appointed Marco Rose for next season but would be looking to make the UEFA Champions League distraction a perfect footnote to the rest of this season.
Indeed, BVB have enjoyed better form in Europe this season, winning four of their six games and scoring 12 goals as they finished top of the group.
The Spanish Hurdle
In the Champions League Round of 16, the challenge of Sevilla is immense. Julen Lopetegui’s men have won nine on the bounce and kept their run of clean sheets to seven by Buonou’s wonder save over the weekend.
Sevilla currently sit fourth in La Liga but are utterly disappointing in Europe’s premier competition. The most successful Europa League club (six titles) have a disappointing single UCL quarter-final appearance (in 2017/18) in sixty years.
Needless to say, stopping the Norwegian goal-machine is no mean feat.
Haaland would be desperate to get to the latter stages of the competition given his incredible talent and must lead his team past Los Nervionenses.
”Sevilla are a strong team that have won the Europa League several times,” Haaland said, issuing a rallying cry to his teammates. “We just have to get back in shape and do our best on the pitch to have a chance. If we play like we did in the last few games, we don’t stand a chance.”
Inspirational Haaland
Par for the course, Sevilla will be sick of the sight of a big left-footed centre-forward after Chelsea’s Olivier Giroud scored four in their last UCL home game in December
Terzić’s UCL debut can be a fairytale if his hungry, fearless and ridiculously talented group pull together to change their fortunes. The Bundesliga’s underachievers could well turn out to be this season’s Champions League dark horses
The likes of Jadon Sancho, Jude Bellingham, Giovanni Reyna, and Reinier no doubt possess the ability, they only need direction. Everyone, except the Spaniards, would be hoping Haaland can score the goals to inspire his team to a fairytale adventure
