Presser before #BVBFCA | Favre: “Except for Guerreiro and Morey, everyone is fit”

Borussia Dortmund start their hunt for the Bundesliga championship at the Westfalenstadion against FC Augsburg on Saturday. Here is the summary of Thursday’s pre-match press conference.

Personnel Update

Except for Raphael Guerreiro, who is sidelined with muscular problems and Mateu Morey, who is recovering from a dislocated shoulder everyone is fit, according to Lucien Favre.

That means that Roman Bürki, who was out due to a shin injury will reclaim his spot in goal and Julian Brandt, who played 45 minutes in Saturday’s friendly against Preußen Münster after recovering from a “shittily timed injury“, may at least start on the bench.

Hummels will play his first home match

After missing the Supercup, Mats Hummels will make his comeback in front of the Yellow Wall in a BVB shirt on Saturday. Asked whether will give him a warm welcome, Michael Zorc said: “I don’t know why there’d be a different reaction. We expect that he shows a good performance — if he plays, which I assume.”

Favre added: “He participated in the entire pre-season apart from the game against Bayern, where he had a slight knock. But now he is available again and played in every training. We expect of him to help us with his experience. He has won titles everywhere, he’s a world champion.”

Who needs a hug?

Among other rule changes, there will be a novelty in the Bundesliga for this new season: the matchday squad increases from 18 to 20 players, which should be an advantage for teams that have a lot of depth — like Borussia Dortmund.

Nevertheless, the 61-year-old will have to exclude players that deserve a spot on the bench. “That’s part of the business,’ Favre said, adding: “there is competition in every job nowadays. It’s the same for professional footballers. Sure, sometimes you need to explain the situation and sometimes it’s a logical consequence of bad training performances or a lack of form.”

Zorc, meanwhile, will not console players: “We have set big goals, which we declared publicly. That requires competition in several positions and we expect players to deal with that professionally. The coach will choose the line-up he thinks will give him the best chance of winning. It’s about beating Augsburg this weekend.”

Spiel für Spiel

Of course, if you want to win the championship not only the players have to raise their game but the coaching staff as well — something that we addressed in Wednesday’s Episode 286.

Favre said: “Of course you could say that [the coaching staff have to raise their ambitions, too]. The goals are pretty high. But we played a very good season with 76 points — we can’t just name a number of points we want to reach this time. I understand why we declare the goal to win the championship but it’s about what happens in the field and I will stick to my philosophy of thinking from game to game.”

Cause ain’t no such things as halfway uncomfortable opponents

Last season, FC Augsburg made life tough for the Black and Yellows. Dortmund barely won the home match 4-3 thanks to a direct free-kick scored by Paco Alcácer with the final kick off the game. Meanwhile, the away match was lost 2-1.

“We want to every game, obviously. But we know that there is no such thing as comfortable opponents. We realised that last season — it was always tough no matter against. Just one match was fairly easy, which was the 7-0 home win against Nuremberg,” Favre said, alluding to yet another difficult task against the Fuggerstädter, who crashed out of the DFB Pokal against fourth-tier side Verl.

“Their cup exit is not an advantage for us,” the coach said. “We know Augsburg very well. I saw a couple of test games where they played very well. We want to win. Basta.”

Causa Guerreiro

After the Supercup win, a euphoric Favre told a news conference that he believes that Raphael Guerreiro, who has one year left on his Dortmund contract, will stay.

However, Hans-Joachim Watzke explained at Wednesday’s Ruhr Nachrichten 19:09 talk that the club would prefer to sell the player if a contract extension won’t materialise in the coming weeks.

“We would like to extend with him,” Watzke said. “There are several parties involved. If we hear he does not want to extend (his contract), then we have to think about what we will do then. We owe the club a certain level of financial responsibility. Next year he could leave for free. That’s a scenario we absolutely don’t want to have.”

Michael Zorc said at the press conference: “We’re in talks.”