After a draw in Augsburg on the opening day of the Bundesliga season, SV Werder Bremen are finally back at the Weserstadion for their first home match of the 2024/25 campaign. Borussia Dortmund are the visitors for Saturday’s game (30/08/24, kick-off 15:30 CEST). While the Green-Whites are unbeaten in seven competitive matches, Borussia come into the fixture with fresh impetus.
Team news: Head coach Ole Werner can draw on a nearly full squad for the encounter with Borussia. The sole absentee will be Amos Pieper, for whom it’s still too early to play, since he only returned to team training this week after recovering from a muscle injury.
The head coach on the opponents: “They have strengthened well over the summer with players who fit the style of play that they have demonstrated in the first few games. Key figures have been recruited in every department – Anton, Groß, Guirassy – and they have also improved their squad with Beier. In possession, they play similarly to Leverkusen and Stuttgart in terms of structure, so I expect to see them achieving even better results in the Bundesliga than last season. We’ve now been unbeaten for seven games, stretching back to the last campaign. We want to continue that run and are looking forward to the task at hand.”
Recent encounters: SV Werder Bremen versus Borussia Dortmund is a classic Bundesliga contest. This will be the 119th time that the two rivals face off in a competitive match, with Borussia winning 53 of those and the Green-Whites 47. Marco Reus is the fixture’s top scorer with 11 goals, although he left to join LA Galaxy in Major League Soccer during the summer. Dortmund’s Timo Konietzka scored the goal with the most historic significance when he netted the first ever in the history of the Bundesliga on 24th August 1963. Oliver Burke recorded a similarly unforgettable moment in Werder’s last win against BVB, when Ole Werner’s side were able to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 victory late on.
A former Green-White returns to Bremen: Just 1,679 days after he played his last Bundesliga home game for SVW, Nuri Sahin will return to the Weser as the head coach of a top European club. Sahin played solely for Werder and Borussia in the German top flight, with his most successful spell in Dortmund. Making his debut for BVB at the age of 16, the midfielder was the youngest Bundesliga player of all time for over 15 years until his later protégé Youssoufa Moukoko (currently on loan at Nice) took this record from him in November 2020. As a player, the now 35-year-old became a German champion and DFB-Pokal winner with the Black-Yellows, successes he now wants to build on as a coach.
