Borussia Dortmund overwhelms Hamburger SV: own goal, red card and a rival post

It took just eight minutes for SIGNAL IDUNA PARK to rise to its feet. Serhou Guirassy received a pass from Konstantinos Karetsas and finished with his right foot from the center of the box, low and inside the left post, putting Borussia Dortmund ahead. The final 2-0 against Hamburger SV ended up being a comfortable afternoon for the home side, though the match had a bit of everything: an own goal, a red card and a rival post hitting the woodwork once the result already looked settled.

The second goal came on the final play of the first half. Around the 45th minute, a ball that bounced around the box ended up in the back of the net off a deflection from Sebastiaan Bornauw, sending Dortmund into the break with the 2-0 that would ultimately prove decisive. Before that, the home side had given an early warning with a shot from Felix Nmecha that grazed the crossbar in just the 7th minute, and kept pressing through Karetsas, who fired off several shots from outside the box that forced the visiting goalkeeper into action.

Hamburger SV, for its part, took time to show any real threat. Its best chance came in the second half: in the 66th minute, Patson Daka struck a right-footed shot from outside the box off a counterattack and rattled the right post, the most serious warning of the entire match for a team that needed to respond. Albert Gronbaek also tried his luck from outside the box but couldn't find the target.

The match took another turn in the 76th minute, when Samuele Inacio, who had just come on as a substitute for Borussia Dortmund, was shown a red card. The home side finished the final stretch with ten men, which didn't stop them from continuing to create chances: Joey Veerman and Kaua Prates, both also recent substitutes, had shots that failed to find the net in stoppage time.

The numbers behind the dominance

The stats confirm what was seen on the field: a Borussia Dortmund side that controlled the game for the full 90 minutes, even while playing part of the second half with a man down.

The xG generated in the match, an in-house estimate calculated from shot locations, came out to 1.18 for Borussia Dortmund and 1.04 for Hamburger SV, a much tighter margin than the scoreline suggests, reflecting Daka's post and Hamburg's second-half chances.

Beforehand, our projection gave Borussia Dortmund a 65% chance of winning, with a 20% chance of a draw and 15% for a Hamburger SV win, and we calculated expected goals of 2.36 for the home side against 1.07 for the visitors. The result ultimately matched that forecast, though the path there had more twists than expected, with the red card and Hamburg's post along the way.

What it means in the standings

With this result, Borussia Dortmund sits in third place in the Bundesliga with 3 points after its first match, sharing the top of the table with Bayern Munich and RB Leipzig, both also with a perfect record. Hamburger SV, meanwhile, opens with no points and sits near the bottom of the table, with a negative goal difference that reflects just how difficult the match in Dortmund was. The 3-point gap between the two sides already hints at the gulf on display on the field.