Borussia Dortmund coach, Thomas Tuchel, said it was “awesome” to become the first visiting manager to win at Wolfsburg’s Volkswagen Arena since March last year.
Dortmund very nearly threw away the chance to close the gap to Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich, who lost on Saturday, when Ricardo Rodríguez netted a stoppage-time penalty for Wolfsburg to cancel out Marco Reus’s opener.
But a late Shinji Kagawa strike earned the Westphalians a 2-1 triumph and edged them to within five points of Bayern, much to the delight of Tuchel.
He said: “Of course, our disappointment was unbounded when we conceded the penalty, although I’ve got to say the equaliser had been coming. But then we played the final few minutes like we had played in the first half and it’s awesome that we still managed to win it.
“We’re over the moon about this win, but I’m far from happy with the way we played in the second half. The first 36 minutes were excellent and one of our best games yet.”
Wolfsburg could and perhaps should have done better in the second half, but a mixture of misses and saves by the goalkeeper Roman Burki saw them lose on home soil for the first time in 30 games.
Their manager, Dieter Hecking, said: “We were lucky when they hit the crossbar twice, but then we gifted them their goal. Then we found our way into the game after 35 minutes and played the football I had hoped to see from the start of the game.
“We then had the game under control and we dominated in the second half, and I cannot criticise anything up until the 93rd minute.
“We had more than deserved to level, but then we gave the ball away too easily and were punished with their second goal. After all of our efforts, that’s very frustrating.”
Wolfsburg will now need to recover their energy as quickly as possible for the visit of Manchester United in the Champions League on Tuesday.
