These are the games that I hate writing about. When Borussia Dortmund lose in some calamitous fashion, like they did against Real Madrid on Tuesday, it?s actually quite easy to fire off an emotion-driven tirade about how the team lacks heart or the coach needs to be fired. It?s much harder to write about a standard 2-1 defeat in which Dortmund didn?t blow a last-minute lead or suffer a controversial penalty call, especially because it just continued the same blasé trends that have carried on week-in and week-out as this painstakingly mediocre season drags forward.
Believe it or not, the game actually started quite well. In fact, pretty much the only good thing in the whole game happened in the fourth minute when the BVB press forced a turnover and Serhou Guirassy played a clever pass into the feet of Donyell Malen, who slotted the shot home, thereby giving BVB the lead, and BVB fans the lone bright spot of the game. Borussia Dortmund trailed for almost half the game and dominated every possession metric, but had almost no offensive output to show for it. Obviously, they didn?t equalize, but it?s so much worse than just that.

I don?t believe I can adequately convey the extent to which almost nothing happened in this game. BVB scored early and then created basically nothing. Augsburg obviously scored twice, but they were both more or less out of nothing and resulted from either a goalkeeping mistake or a defensive turnover. The fact that nothing happen pro...