Last season saw Borussia Dortmund enjoy something of a transition year. Having parted company with coach Thomas Tuchel at the end of the 2016/17 season their search for a new coach led to them appointing the former Ajax coach Peter Bosz. The Dutchman, however, did not last long in Dortmund and he was replaced in December by the Austrian coach Peter Stoger. Neither coach captured the imagination of the passionate Dortmund support and the club was lucky to finish fourth in a Champions League qualification spot. Prior to the appointment of Bosz, however, the clubs first choice had been the former Borussia Monchengladbach coach Lucien Favre, currently coaching in France with Nice, the deal could not be done but for the 2018/19 season, Favre has been signed to coach Dortmund.
We are only three competitive matches into the Favre era at Dortmund but there are already definite signs that he is firmly putting his stamp on the side. Summer recruitment was interesting if not spectacular with the French central defender Abdou Diallo signing from Mainz and midfielders Thomas Delaney and Axel Witsel joining from Werder Bremen and Tianjin Quanjian respectively. In terms of attacking reinforcements winger Marius Wolf moved from Eintracht Frankfurt and in the final stages of the transfer window, the Spanish international forward Paco Alcacer arrived from Barcelona.
Over the course of the transfer window then Dortmund had strengthened the spine of their side considerably and, perhaps more importantly, they had moved to sign two central midfielders, in Delaney and Witsel, who fit with the tactical identity that Dortmund will look to instil at the club.
Even though they are only three competitive matches into the season with a win over third-tier Greuter Furth in the DFB Pokal and a win over RB Leipzig in the opening match of the season before drawing 0-0 away to Hannover 96 we have still seen enough to get a sense of where Favre wants to take this team from a tactical point of view.
The Defensive Phase The Yellow Wall
When a new coach takes charge of a club one of the most common tactical concepts that the coach will work on first is the defensive shape. The long-held belief in football is that you should always look to build your team from the back to the front and out of all the aspects of Dortmunds game model so far under Favre it is the defensive phase that looks the most complete and effective.
Gone are the days of gegenpressing (counterpressing) that Dortmund utilised so effectively under their former coach Jurgen Klopp and instead Favre has installed a more structured defensive approach with a medium block looking to only press the opposition situationally, when they make an error in their build-up or when they enter the Dortmund half of the field.
As you can see from the image above Dortmund under Favre will look to defend in a 4-1-4-1 shape with Axel Witsel being the midfielder that looks to sit deeper and shield the centre of the defensive unit. That may change when the young German midfielder Julian Weigl is ready to return to the first team and we may well see Weigl deployed deeper and Axel Witsel playing more as one of the two 8s. What is key in terms of defensive structuring from Dortmund is that the defensive block is exceptionally well organised with excellent spacing across the width of the field.
Whilst in medium or deep blocks it can often look as though the opposition winger or wide attacker on the opposite (ball far) side of the field is free and unmarked with his fullback tucking into a central position any switch of play by the opposition would see the defensive pendulum swing across with space being closed off on the ball near side of the field.
