Haaland leads Dortmund past Sevilla in Champions League
Erling Haaland scored twice as Borussia Dortmund ended Sevilla’s nine-game winning streak with a 3-2 come-from-behind victory in the first leg of the round of 16 of the Champions League on Wednesday.
The hosts took the lead early through Suso Fernández but Dortmund rallied with a goal by Mahmoud Dahoud and Haaland’s double before halftime at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán Stadium. Luuk de Jong scored Sevilla's late second goal to improve the Spanish team's chances in the return leg.
“The first half, outside of the early goal, went exactly as we had envisioned it,” Dortmund captain Marco Reus said. “We sat a little deeper than normal but were very compact. We won the ball well, got it forward onto dangerous positions and took the lead. The first half was very good.”
The win ended Sevilla’s good run and put Dortmund back on track after a series of poor results that had left coach Edin Terzic under pressure in Germany. The second leg will be on March 9 in Germany. In the other round-of-16 match on Wednesday, Porto defeated Juventus 2-1 at home.
Suso opened the scoring for Sevilla in the seventh minute with a shot from outside the area that deflected off two defenders before finding the net. The visitors equalized when Dahoud fired a right-footed, long-range shot into the top corner in the 19th.
The 20-year-old Haaland put the visitors ahead in the 27th from inside the area after a nice give-and-go exchange of passes with Jadon Sancho, then added to the lead in the 43rd from close range after a fast breakaway for his 18th goal in 13 Champions League games.
The Norwegian forward only trails Kylian Mbappé as the player with most Champions League goals before his 21st birthday. The 22-year-old Mbappé, who scored a hat trick in Paris Saint-Germain's 4-1 win at Barcelona on Tuesday, scored 19 goals before turning 21.
“We had a good plan,” Haaland said. “Edin has been good and I’ve been talking a lot with him. He said today would be my game and that I would get my chances and I did, so it was an important win. It was not good to let in two goals, but it is good to score three away goals and take them with us.”
De Jong pulled Sevilla closer with a goal from a set piece in the 84th. “They have fast players in attack and knew how to use their speed,” Suso said. “We were not as focused as we should have been and they took advantage of it. In the end it was a fair result. If there’s a team that can surprise, it’s ours. We will try to fix our mistakes going into the next match.”
Dortmund travelled to Spain having won only one of its last six German league matches. It had lost its last four away matches in the round of 16 of the Champions League.
"One game isn’t enough to make everything from recent weeks right,” Reus said. “We took an important step tonight and need to aim to do exactly the same if not more in the derby (against Schalke) this weekend.”
Sevilla’s last loss in all competitions had been a 2-0 defeat to Atlético Madrid in the Spanish league in January. It was coming off a league win against Huesca and a 2-0 victory over Barcelona in the first leg of the Copa del Rey semifinals.
Sevilla, the reigning Europa League champion, is playing in the Champions League for the first time since 2018, when it lost to Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals. Dortmund is playing in the round of 16 for the seventh time in eight seasons, but it last made it to the quarterfinals in 2017, when it lost to Monaco.
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