Sebastien Haller getting back to his best as Borussia Dortmund keep believing
Sebastien Haller continued his superb run of form in Borussia Dortmund’s 5-2 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach on Matchday 32, saying it would be “unbelievable” if his side manage to wrest the Bundesliga title away from Bayern Munich.
Haller took centre stage as Dortmund romped to victory in the Battle of the Borussias, essentially putting the game to bed with four goals in the first 32 minutes. The 28-year-old’s deflected shot was headed in by Donyell Malen for an early opener, before he won a penalty that Jude Bellingham converted. He then got on the scoresheet himself in spectacular fashion, turning in an outrageous flick from Malen’s low cross.
“Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” a beaming Haller told bundesliga.com after the final whistle. “As a striker, you’re sometimes used to this movement because you’re ahead of the ball, but you still need to hit it. Today it worked perfectly, so I was really happy.”
“I’ve seen backheels like that before, but you need real top quality to do it,” echoed Malen, who set up another Haller goal 12 minutes later. “He’s a good striker, so he can do this kind of thing. I’ve seen it a few times in training!”
Gladbach never recovered from Haller and Malen’s first-half double act, even if strikes from Ramy Bensebaini and outgoing captain Lars Stindl lessened the sting of their third league defeat in four outings. BVB had the last laugh either way, with substitute Gio Reyna tapping in from close range to round out a comfortable afternoon at the Signal Iduna Park.
It was the first time this season that Haller had netted in consecutive league games – after he grabbed Dortmund’s second in their 6-0 demolition of Wolfsburg the previous week – and it took his tally to seven goals and three assists in 17 appearances. With Bayern claiming their own one-sided win against Schalke to remain a point clear at the top, the France-born Ivory Coast international was asked what it would mean to overhaul the record champions down the stretch.
“It would be unbelievable,” he responded. “I’m always positive and you just say, ‘Why not?’. Before I started being able to play for Dortmund, we were sixth, so of course you have other targets in mind. And now suddenly you are able to play for the title! I think we just need to be humble, grateful, and still work as we did in the last months and weeks, and then we will see.”
Recent history would suggest that even with their slender advantage, the smart money is on Bayern to retain their Bundesliga crown – but Haller knows a thing or two about upsetting the odds.
His well-documented battle with testicular cancer kept him out of first-team action for the first six months of his Dortmund contract, but after two surgeries and four courses of chemotherapy, he returned as a substitute in the first game of 2023, a 4-3 win over Augsburg. A few weeks later, he showed he was truly back by notching his first goal for the club in a 5-1 dismissal of Freiburg, and it just so happened to arrive on 4 February – World Cancer Day.
“To score today was a great message to everyone who is fighting today or will fight later,” he said, having had a defiant ‘F**k Cancer’ slogan sewn into his boots for the occasion. “It gives some hope, some courage. That’s it, you know? The days after will always be better.”
They have certainly been better for Haller, who has featured in all 17 league assignments since that thriller with Augsburg, Dortmund’s Matchday 33 opponents. Yet the extent of what his body has been through is demonstrated by the fact that he still hasn’t played a full 90-minute game for BVB, generally making way for fellow striker Youssoufa Moukoko in the second half.
Haller, Malen and Karim Adeyemi have scored a combined 22 league goals in 2023, helping propel Dortmund to the top of the form charts – they have eight points and 13 goals more than Bayern since the start of the calendar year, as well as the most prolific attack in Europe’s top five leagues (53 goals). Yet remarkably, none of the three – for obvious reasons, in Haller’s case – managed to find the target in the Bundesliga before the World Cup break.
“We suffered a lot of setbacks, with those three in particular,” admitted BVB coach Edin Terzic. “Seb was out for the entire first half of the season, then Donny had a spell out after a really good DFB Cup game. Karim too. So they started the season with injuries and illnesses – and yet when you see how they’re performing, and what they’re capable of, it’s hard to imagine that after 16 matchdays, Donny and Karim hadn’t scored in the Bundesliga.”
“We’ve adapted to each other, and you can see in the last few weeks that it’s been working really well,” Haller said of his two strike partners. “I’m really happy to have this connection with those two and the guys behind me. I just hope that we will keep this for the last two games of the season.”
Augsburg and Mainz have been warned, then, but this isn’t the first time Haller has found himself at the sharp end of a Bundesliga attacking trident. Between 2017 and 2019 he was deployed alongside Luka Jovic and Ante Rebic at Eintracht Frankfurt, where he racked up 24 goals and 13 assists in 60 top-flight appearances. The trio helped the Eagles lift the DFB Cup in 2017/18 – with Haller contributing a team-high four goals – and then reach the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa League in 2018/19.
Haller, Jovic and Rebic were nicknamed ‘Die Büffelherde’ (the ‘buffalo herd’) by teammate Kevin Trapp due to their imposing physical presence. Indeed, Haller finished both of his campaigns at Frankfurt having contested the second-highest number of challenges in the Bundesliga. In spite of his long absence he has also thrown himself back into the fray this season, winning an impressive 52 per cent of his challenges – a rarity among strikers.
Surprisingly for a player of his aerial prowess, the man from Ris-Orangis only counts three headers among his 31 Bundesliga goals. He has also had relatively few shots on goal this term (24), but clearly favours quality over quantity: 15 of those attempts have been on target (62.5 per cent), while almost one in three of them ended up in the back of the net (seven).
Haller’s three years away from the Bundesliga were a mixed bag. He never fully settled in the English Premier League with West Ham, despite netting three times in his first three league appearances. But after leaving for Ajax midway through 2020/21 he rediscovered his mojo, banging in 13 goals in just 23 games to claim a league and cup double. In 2021/22 he was the Eredivisie’s top marksman with 21 goals as Ajax successfully defended their title.
He also carved himself out a slice of UEFA Champions League history with the Dutch giants by becoming the first player to score in his first seven matches in the competition. That phenomenal run included a four-goal salvo on his debut at Sporting Lisbon, and goals home and away in wins over his future employers BVB.
The cancer diagnosis came only days after he joined Dortmund in summer 2022, but the signs are there that Haller is once again approaching his best level, and no doubt quicker than many would have expected. He has started the last 14 games in all competitions, picking up four goals and two assists in his last five league outings.
He and the whole club still believe they can snatch their first Meisterschale in over a decade, but his recent experiences have given him a healthy sense of perspective heading into the home straight.
