By Chris Wright
Dortmund kept alive the opportunity for the departing Jurgen Klopp to sign off with a trophy by edging out big bad Bayern Munich in the semi-finals of the DFB Pokal (German Cup) on Tuesday night.
(Word to the wise, our highlight video autoplays, so you might want to make haste and scroll your way through this pretty swiftly.)
Just to get things rolling, there were weird effigies in the crowd…
Robert Lewandowski opened the scoring for Bayern on the half-hour mark, sprinting onto a long ball over the top before dinking a delightful little chip over Mitchell Langerak…
After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang then levelled for Dortmund on 75′ with only their second shot on-target of the night – a sliding finish at the far post which just about crept over Manuel Neuer’s line…
And that’s how it stayed for the remainder of normal and extra time (Dortmund having Kevin Kampl sent-off during the latter for a second bookable offence) and so we were ‘treated’, in the loosest sense of the word, to one of the worst penalty shoot-outs in recent memory.
What followed was a succession of dreadful penalties from Bayern, with Philippe Lahm and Xabi Alonso both slipping in identical fashion as they spanked their respective spot-kicks high over the bar…
Dortmund answered by tucking away their first two kicks, Ilkay Gundogan firing into the top corner and Sebastien Kehl passing his into the bottom corner before Mario Gotze had his effort palmed away by Langerek and Mats Hummels saw his kick saved by Neuer thus leaving the score 2-0 to Dortmund with three penalties taken apiece.
Neuer himself then stepped up to take Bayern’s fourth and promptly hit the crossbar, thus sending Dortmund through to the final without having to take their corresponding penalty.
Here’s the entire shoot-out in full…
As you’d expect, Kloppo gave it the beans in his celebration charge, completely blanking Pep in the process…
So that’s Dortmund through to play either Arminia Bielefeld or Wolfsburg (depending who wins tonight’s second semi) in the Final come Saturday 30th May…
(Photos: Getty)