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Despite contrasting domestic success in recent years, Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain have remarkably similar European records.
Neither have lifted continental silverware since the turn of the millennium. PSG won the now-defunct Cup Winners’ Cup in 1996 and were runners-up the following season — their lack of European achievements since have been symptomatic of Ligue 1 teams in Europe.
Dortmund lifted the Champions League the season after PSG’s success, in 1997. The two sides have only appeared in one Champions League final each since those trophies, both defeated by Bayern Munich — Dortmund, 2-1 at Wembley in 2013, PSG, 1-0, in 2020, having knocked Dortmund out in the round of 16.
With Bayern facing Real Madrid in the other semi-final, it opens the possibility of a repeat final — Dortmund or PSG against Bayern would be the ninth different Champions League final to have been played at least twice.
This semi-final is also a meeting between the top two from the ‘group of death’. Dortmund won Group F ahead of PSG, who squeezed through at the expense of AC Milan and Newcastle United. It was one of only two groups (along with Group H) where every team won and lost.
(Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
The quirk was that Dortmund failed to win either game against PSG, with their only group-stage defeat coming on matchday one at the Parc des Princes. The return leg, matchday six (with Dortmund already qualified), finished 1-1.
“We didn’t like the first game in Paris at all,” reflected Dortmund head coach Edin Terzic after their quarter-final second-leg win at home to Atletico Madrid. “We’re a much more solid team than in September or even December”.
Dortmund played a 3-5-2, defending as a 5-3-2, in Paris. Tellingly, they have not returned to that formation, switching to 4-2-3-1. “We had too much respect,” said Terzic. “We wanted to jump out of positions much more courageously and put the opposition under pressure much earlier and much more aggressively.”
The setup was designed to counter-attack — 33 per cent possession for Dortmund — but Terzic bemoaned a failure to make passes stick when they regained possession, which led to waves of PSG attacks.
Dortmund had pace out wide against the speedy dribbling threats of Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele and this back-five shape gave better coverage to defend PSG’s rotations. Luis Enrique’s side lined up in a 4-3-3 but would rotate into a 3-2-5. Right-back Achraf Hakimi took up advanced inside positions and central midfielder Vitinha joined the last line, moving out to the left wing so Mbappe could play centrally.
They might have had the coverage but Dortmund defended wide areas poorly, particularly when Hakimi underlapped and PSG combined on the right for the two goals.
The return leg was a much better Dortmund showing. PSG, in the absence of Dembele, played a rare back five and a ‘box’ midfield. Dortmund had more of the ball and were better against the press, splitting their centre-backs wide in the build-up and pushing on both full-backs to pin back PSG.
Playing Emre Can as a lone defensive midfielder allowed central midfielders Julian Brandt and Marcel Sabitzer to take up aggressive between-the-lines positions. Brandt is the attacking heartbeat and Sabitzer has registered five assists from his last seven Champions League appearances. Dembele, now with PSG, is the only Dortmund player to assist more during a Champions League campaign (six in 2016-17).
Dortmund’s direct play onto No 9 Niclas Fullkrug was something PSG never fully got to grips with. Dortmund are a top-five team for aerial duel success in Europe this season, with PSG in the bottom five, and their difficulties in defending Barcelona’s long balls into Robert Lewandowski in the quarter-final first leg proved it can be a fruitful route for Dortmund again.
Counter-attacks were a theme of the 1-1 draw in Dortmund. Terzic’s side do not dominate the ball — they have the most tackles, interceptions and clearances of any Champions League team — and have quick inverted wingers who they can release after regaining the ball. For all of Luis Enrique’s efforts to replicate Barcelona’s traditional style with PSG, they retain a counter-attacking threat, which is inevitable with the speed and ball-carrying ability of Mbappe, Dembele, and Bradley Barcola.
There have been 18 Champions League games this season where one team has recorded at least six ‘direct attacks’ — a proxy for counter-attacking — with PSG and Dortmund involved in seven of those games. They have a shared strength in attack but a collective weakness in defending attackers. Luis Enrique compared PSG’s defeat in Milan to a tennis match, such was their failure to counter-press and stop transitions (illustrated in the GIF below).
For Dortmund, the first pass in transition is critical to bypass the counter-press and exploit the space left by PSG. “We lost the ball a lot unnecessarily. When you’ve won the ball but give it away after three seconds, it makes things even more difficult,” said Terzic after defeat in Paris.
The second leg will be, regardless of the outcome, Mbappe’s final European night at the Parc des Princes.
The first leg of the quarter-final against Barcelona was an uncharacteristically quiet night for Mbappe in Paris. He failed to score, having done so in each of the three home group-stage games and the round-of-16 first leg against Real Sociedad.
He has scored eight goals in the Champions League this season, including three penalties, his joint-most in any European campaign (also eight in 2020-21), and is the competition’s outright top scorer in 2023-24. Mbappe accounts for 42 per cent of PSG’s Champions League goals this season, the highest proportion of any team in the knockouts. His shot map (below) shows how he is a threat all around the penalty area.
Even in their efforts to become a more balanced team and varied in attack, PSG still rely on Mbappe to crack games open, especially against compact and deep defences, which Dortmund can be expected to provide.
For Mbappe to succeed, he will need service from midfield. PSG were often overrun there in the group stages, notably away to Newcastle with Luis Enrique’s experimental 4-2-4. The significant change in the knockouts has not been systematic but personnel-based, replacing the defensively substandard Ugarte — who has a 32.3 per cent duel success rate this season — with Fabian Ruiz. He has anchored the team better, allowing Vitinha to provide a final-third threat from midfield, crashing the box, making penetrative runs and connecting with the wingers.
Dortmund’s goal spread is a complete contrast to PSG. Their 15 Champions League goals have been scored by 11 players, with nobody on more than two. The lack of a primary goalscorer is less of a problem considering PSG’s defensive frailties — they have conceded in their last 18 Champions League away games, last keeping a clean sheet in a 2-0 win away to Istanbul Basaksehir in October 2020.
Mbappe got the better of Gregor Kobel from the penalty spot on matchday one, but the Dortmund goalkeeper has been excellent this season. Using the expected goals on target (xGOT) metric — which provides a modified value of an on-target shot after the player shoots — we can see that Kobel has been, statistically, the best shot-stopper in the Champions League (with a ‘goals prevented’ of 4.8). Nobody has more than his four clean sheets either.
Often, individual player battles are looked at as a direct opponent (winger against full-back, No 9 versus centre-back), but Dortmund will probably be as reliant on their goalkeeper to stop Mbappe as their defence.
Kobel epitomises Dortmund’s reliance on individuals — a more common trend of successful knockout teams than one might expect. In their 10 European games this season, opponents have posted more expected goals (xG) than Dortmund seven times, suggesting they are creating more chances. Deep knockout rounds are all about performing when it counts, so exceptional (unsustainable) performances in both boxes matter even more, but they are far from watertight.
If the narrative is that games are won and lost in the final 15 minutes, it might not apply here. PSG have been consistently poor in European first halves, especially in knockout rounds at home to Real Sociedad and Barcelona in the knockouts.
Clearly, Luis Enrique’s half-time team talks and tactical tweaks have worked. PSG have only scored four first-half Champions League goals, conceding six, but are 10-3 in the first 15 minutes after half-time. That so happens to be Dortmund’s weak spot, as they start second halves slowly, conceding five and scoring twice (their worst 15-minute game period).
PSG and Dortmund, in so many ways, could not be more similar and different at the same time. PSG’s individual quality and domestic strength make them slight favourites, but the first leg being in Dortmund makes it particularly hard to predict. After the group of death comes the semi-final of possibilities.
(Top photo: Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
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