Stuttgart exposed Dortmund's broken defence - Sahin won't last long if he can't fix it

Sebastian Hoeneß's side thrashed Dortmund 5-1 on Sunday and made it abundantly clear that the Bundesliga giants still have a lot of work to do under their new head coach

If there was any doubt that Nuri Sahin’s worst nightmares had been realised over the course of 90 minutes of football at the Neckarstadion on Sunday, it became abundantly clear after the final whistle when the young head coach braved the bright lights and demanding tones of the media. In a match that many had predicted would be an intriguing, well-contested affair, Borussia Dortmund had been systematically dissected by their opponents over and over again. In the bluntest of ways, Sebastian Hoeneß had brought an end to Sahin’s solid start at Dortmund with one fell swoop. 

"That was naturally sobering," Sahin said at full time. "Totally deserved from the first minute to the last. That was very bad. Almost nothing in the duels. The basics weren't there. Forget about the tactics we discussed. When the basics aren't there, something like that happens." Before wrapping up his media duties, the Dortmund head coach made it abundantly clear what he thought of his team’s performance: "I don't want to see such a show from my team ever again.” A damning remark, no doubt. 

However, while Sahin may wish to chalk Sunday’s result up to his team freezing like rabbits in the headlights and abruptly downing tools after an impressive start to the season, such a defeat had been a long time coming. And rather than the 5-1 defeat to Stuttgart being an outlier in Dortmund’s season, it was in fact the first time that Sahin’s side had played a top-level team. And to no great surprise, Hoeneß’s well-drilled hosts simply took advantage of the gaps that had become clear for all to see in Dortmund’s previous matches. Rather than be a one-off mishap, this was Dortmund’s first real test of the season and they failed miserably.