BERLIN :Striker Serhou Guirassy will look to stretch his eight league-game scoring run when Borussia Dortmund host VfL Wolfsburg on Sunday, with the Ruhr valley club eager to put their midweek Champions League disappointment behind them.
Dortmund were leading Juventus 4-2 in their league phase opener in Italy on Tuesday before conceding two goals in stoppage time, and having to settle for a 4-4 draw that felt more like a defeat.
Niko Kovac’ team will look to make amends on Sunday and stay on the heels of champions Bayern Munich who top the Bundesliga on nine points from three matches with Dortmund second on seven.
“When you lose – and the word lose is in quotation marks – a game like that in the last few minutes, then you feel dejected,” Dortmund sports director Sebastian Kehl said. “But we will take a lot of positives from this match.”
What Dortmund will certainly take from the game is the team’s attacking potential and versatility, with in-form winger Karim Adeyemi adding scintillating pace and punch up front. Dortmund had four different scorers in Turin.
Guinea international Guirassy was not one of them even though he wanted to take a penalty that was successfully converted by Ramy Bensebaini, the team’s designated spot-kick taker.
Kovac played down the heated debate between the two players prior to the penalty over who would take it.
“Serhou is a fantastic player and a great teammate — he doesn’t take things personally. Everything is fine, there’s no need to make a mountain out of a molehill,” Kovac said.
“I understand that Serhou wanted to take the penalty because he had the opportunity, but he wasn’t the designated taker.”
The striker will be doubly eager to find the back of the net again on Sunday. He has bagged four goals in three league games this season.
In the calendar year, the 29-year-old, joint top scorer in the Champions League last season as well as in the Club World Cup, has netted 19 times in the Bundesliga, two more than Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane.
Kane, who struck twice in Bayern’s 3-1 Champions League win over Chelsea on Wednesday, can add to that against Hoffenheim on Saturday. Cologne, in third place, travel to RB Leipzig, while last season’s runners-up Bayer Leverkusen, in 10th, host Borussia Moenchengladbach on Sunday.
(Reporting Karolos Grohmann, editing by Ed Osmond)
