Club Brugge had an extremely frustrating evening in the Champions League on Wednesday. The team of coach Philippe Clement went down 0-5 at home against RB Leipzig, after the Germans already had a 0-4 lead at halftime. Ruud Vormer remained on the bench with the home team for the entire game, while Bas Dost and Noa Lang were allowed to give up. A lot of criticism arose about the latter, partly due to a hard foul on Josko Gvardiol.
Brugge had no prospect of a result against Leipzig and saw the frustrations increase in the course of the match. “Of course I also take the blame on myself”, Clement acknowledged afterwards in front of the cameras of VTM. “I’m the one who decides the line-up and comes up with the tactics. You want to score a goal and play forward, but we weren’t good enough in the duels. And of course I made the wrong choices.” It was striking that the audience in the Jan Breydel Stadium started chanting Vormer’s name after the second German goal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4ZNjHyHV68
Click on ‘Watch on YouTube’ to see Noa Lang’s violation (from 2.10 min)
“Clement is vulnerable, while that is not really necessary”, is HLNanalyst Marc Degryse believes. “Vormer is certainly not the reason why Club Brugge is in a lesser period. How the public quickly started calling for Vormer, that is asking for problems.” For Club Brugge, which is now last in Group A with four points from five matches, everything comes down to the last game against Paris Saint-Germain. With a victory over Leipzig, the Belgians were assured of European wintering.
Noa Lang did herself a very disservice. The attacker, who was last accurate two months ago, made a frustrated impression and underlined that with a hard tackle on Gvardiol’s ankles. The Dutchman got away with only yellow, but was not left untouched in the afterthought. “You noticed from the players that they are not there happy “Lang and Balanta should be glad they didn’t get a red card,” Degryse continues. They crossed the line, clearly an expression of frustration. that bad people management will still get Clement on his plate.”
Also sporzaanalyst Eddy Snelders was shocked by the level of Bruges. “You can lose, but the way was mind-blowing. There was not an ounce of commitment, no resilience. The Club’s group of players completely experienced the match yesterday. It took them 35 minutes to cross the center line. It was shocking. Clement opted for lightweights in the attack because they would be on the ball a lot. The opposite was true. I’m not saying it’s a crisis yet, but the first signs are there.”