Borussia Dortmund are firmly back in the hunt for the Bundesliga title after a 5-1 win over Cologne on Friday evening saw them move to within four points of leaders RB Leipzig.
Portugal left-back Raphaël Guerreiro registered his third goal of the season to open the scoring at the Westfalenstadion, in a match which again saw the headlines stolen by new sensation Erling Braut Haaland.
Guerreiro was deployed in a left wing-back role by manager Lucien Favre, and put the home side ahead with less than a minute on the clock. English winger Jadon Sancho found space down the right and cut the ball back into the penalty area for Guerreiro to finish calmly with his right foot after just 50 seconds of play.
Raphaël Guerreiro scores inside the first minute tonight for Borussia Dortmund against Koln pic.twitter.com/67wEN5P07X
— Sean Gillen 🇵🇹 (@SeanGillen9) January 24, 2020
Sancho along with Marco Reus added further goals as Dortmund led 3-1 fifteen minutes from time, at which point teenage striker Haaland was introduced to score a quickfire brace. The double for the Norwegian added to his debut hat-trick last week and many in Germany feel the addition of Haaland is potentially crucial to Dortmund’s title chances.
Although Guerreiro and Dortmund remain in 4th place in the Bundesliga, defeat for table-toppers RB Leipzig at Eintracht Frankfurt [2-0] means the gap between top and fourth is down to 4 points. André Silva was an unused substitute for Frankfurt in the victory, while Gonçalo Paciência celebrated his contract extension by coming off the bench to set up the clinching goal for Filip Kostic late on.
By Sean Gillen
