Kovac rejects crisis talk as Dortmund face Sabah in Baku
Borussia Dortmund coach Niko Kovac dismissed talk of a crisis after three games without a win as his side prepared to face Sabah in the Champions League in Baku on Tuesday.
Archive image · Photo: Eminn / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Dortmund travelled to Azerbaijan with 24 players. Speaking in Baku on Monday, Kovac said the club was "far away" from a crisis, noting that Dortmund were 11th when he arrived and are now second in the Bundesliga, level on points with Bayern Munich. "What we don't like are the results. I'm not making a drama out of it," he said, according to dpa.
Dortmund drew 2-2 with Werder Bremen, lost 1-0 at Bodø/Glimt in the Champions League and drew 0-0 at Union Berlin. Kovac said his motto was not to read anything and that only Tuesday's match mattered. Midfielder Konstantinos Karetsas misses the game with what the club called a ligament injury in his foot.
Kick-off is at 6:45 p.m. German time (1645 GMT). At the news conference, Kovac was briefly left puzzled by a question from a local journalist that he said he did not understand even after translation attempts, SID reported.