The One Question Weekend Preview: Dortmund vs Bayern
Bayern come into this game as solid favorites, but not overwhelming ones. Their shaky start and Dortmund's hot start sees Bayern's win odds dip below 50%, to something like 44%. The stakes are obviously enormous, if Dortmund can win at home, the Bundesliga lead stretches to seven points over Bayern and the race is fully on.
The One Question: Can Dortmund supply their difference makers with the ball in advanced positions?
Difference makers here are Reus, Sancho, Hakimi in advanced positions, and Götze.
The team who has the longest possessions this year? Borussia Dortmund.
The team who allows the shortest possessions against? Bayern.
This will be the most fascinating battle of the day, can Dortmund impose the part of their attack that is the structured, patient, build-up style to fashion a few chances against the smothering defense of Bayern who allow just 7.5 shots per game, lower than everyone short of the Man City Machine. Or will they just create through transition and chaos, which they can do as well.
How Do Dortmund's Difference Makers Generally Receive The Ball?
Chaos
This is where Jaden Sancho and Marco Reus shine.
In his preview of the match, Raphael Honigstein said Dortmund are "playing with a admirable blend of structure and creative chaos", this is the chaos.
Sancho has received 7 passes inside 20 meters early in possessions (first two passes) 4 of those have come from Reus.
Marco Reus has received 8 passes somewhat early in possessions inside 20 meters, 4 have come from Jaden Sancho.
When Dortmund hit you quick, they hit you with these two combining.
This right-sided lightning might play well for Dortmund, look at Bayern's obverse map:
Their left-hand half-space-ish side has been much more available for opponents. David Alaba has seemingly lost a bit of his fastball this year, struggling out of the gate, while Kimmich's level on the right has been strong from opening day. If you are Bayern, do you put your best center back at stopping counters over on the left? I assume that's Nicolas Süle but that's not anything I've got any data on.
Who gets the ball to Sancho/Reus? If you've read much of me or watched much of Dortmund, there will be no surprise that it is Achraf Hakimi.
Established Possession
This is the structure that Honigstein was talking about. And here is where Hakimi gets more involved, both Reus and Sancho's most common feeder of the ball is Hakimi in more established possession (5th or later pass in a sequence)
Here are Hakimi's passes in this phase with time to shot as color and then receiver as color
The blue vs orange combos in that second chart can partially explain why Jaden Sancho was listed as a difference maker and Christian Pulisic was not (yet?).
Bayern typically don't allow opponents to set up shop in attacking areas deep into possessions
I don't expect this to be a big part of the game really. First off, Dortmund don't even try to enter dangerous areas that often, partially because of the second part of their Double 6 formation:
Zone 5 is about 45-55 yards away from goal (click to see all the zones).
Thomas Delaney gets the ball a lot in this zone, only 5 players have played more passes from this area.
All of them advance the ball at least twice as often, Delaney completes pass "forward" under 10% of the time.
I just don't see a way Delaney getting involved in possessions will help Dortmund get forward. Each time he passes, it mostly just adds a pass to the possession time.
I don't have him graded as a anything special as "safe" passer even really, often times players who essentially only pass backwards come out well in my passer rating, but Delaney does not.
If Dortmund could trade one player out for a similiar-ish level player to help themselves against such a ball-hunting, possession-killing defense like Bayern, I suspect they'd be well-off trading Delaney for a midfielder like say a Florian Grillitsch.
Delaney's two most common pass targets by far this year? Center-backs Akanji and Zagadou.
Witsel->Hakimi will have to do a lot of the work in buildup, that combo is Witsel's most common pass by almost 30.
Witsel and Hakimi have been fantastic lately, but they will be facing their most pressure by far tomorrow.
Especially if Götze doesn't start, slow build-up attacks might not be Dortmund's best avenue to score. Quick attacks through Hakimi to Sancho and Reus targeting Alaba and Bayern's left side could be enough to craft a couple chances and focus almost then become able to almost completely focus on playing defense with their slow possession.
It's the biggest game in Europe so far this season. An unexpected title race, a team soaring out of the gates under a new manager, the narrative juiciness of everything Bayern, recent rivals, and the best crowd in the world roaring along make this basically a must watch from your couch game for the cultured sports fan. Hopefully you are now more prepared to watch, I know I am.