Can Borussia Dortmund Win The UEFA Champions League?

Before the game, it was all about the past, with Borussia Dortmund supporters unveiling stunning choreography that featured newspaper headlines about their club’s famous 5-0, second-leg win over Benfica in the European Cup 54 years earlier.

What followed was similarly emphatic, as a 4-0 defeat of the Portuguese champions ensured that the Black and Yellows can look forward to much more than a promising future: Contrary to earlier fears, Thomas Tuchel’s team is already quite brilliant in the here and now.

Ever the perfectionist, Tuchel bemoaned a poor, nervy spell in the second part of the first half, 20 somewhat dishevelled minutes after Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s had scored the first of his three goals.

The inexperience of Ousmane Dembele nearly resulted in his dismissal for two fouls as the home side seemed caught between going for the kill and making sure they didn’t concede a potentially fatal away goal: “We lost our way a little bit,” Tuchel said.

Once Benfica opened up in search of an equaliser, however, Dortmund found enough space up front to settle into their rhythm. Two goals in three minutes, from Marco Reus-stand-in Christian Pulisic and Aubameyang, settled the tie before the Gabon international forward completed his hat trick five minutes from full-time.

“A top second half,” was Tuchel’s verdict and perhaps the most pleasing part of the performance was the fact that many had seen it coming. At both ends of the pitch, Dortmund have looked like a side transformed in recent weeks, getting close to the devastating form they had shown for much of the previous campaign, when Mats Hummels, Ilkay Gundogan and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were still around to add balance and know-how.

The 4-0 win at the Signal Iduna Park made it four straight wins in all competitions, with a total of 16 goals scored. “We were fantastic after the break; we knew that the goals would come,” said midfielder Julian Weigl and that’s not a platitude.

Under Tuchel’s meticulous regime, Dortmund are once again producing high-quality chances in reliable quantities. The 1-0 defeat at Lisbon three weeks ago was a freak score, given a host of superb scoring opportunities, but the underlying performance was good enough to provide real confidence for the second leg.

Tuchel is proving that his exacting methods work in bringing the exciting attacking potential of the team to bear on the pitch, even without Andre Schurrle (a late substitute on Wednesday) and Mario Gotze (out for the rest of the season with metabolism problems), as well as the injured Reus, who was more than ably replaced by the fearless Pulisic operating in a free role behind Aubameyang.

While BVB’s super-talented forwards were always likely to come good, it’s the defence where the improvement since the winter break has been most profound. Tuchel concluded that the Marc Bartra – Sokratis Papastathopoulos central-defensive partnership needed to be bulked up by a third man, so in stepped Lukasz Piszczek.

The three-at-the-back system also solves a number of possession problems further up the pitch. Opposition players find it harder to press when there are two wing-backs that play high; even when they clamp down on the supply to midfield linchpin Weigl, either Bartra or Piszczek can step forward to start the build-up, safe in the knowledge that there are still two men behind. Piszczek’s formative years as an attacking midfielder at Hertha were apparent when he picked out Pulisic with a precise vertical pass for the 2-0.

Dortmund’s individual quality at the back might not be high enough to go all the way in the Champions League but they will pose huge problems to any team in the quarterfinals and surely threaten RB Leipzig’s second place in the Bundesliga. The DFB Pokal semifinal against Bayern Munich — after they knock out third division Sportfreunde Lotte next week — can also go either way.

In other words: Dortmund are poised for another very successful season. Whether that will be enough to ease tension between Tuchel and the club’s board remains to be seen but a rapprochement will naturally be much easier to facilitate in a climate of achievement.

A few more big, emotional wins like Wednesday’s should also placate the section of fans yet to fully warm to Tuchel’s business-type style of coaching. This Dortmund are all present and correct, ready to deliver now in order to win more time with each other. There’s not much more that anyone can ask.