Dortmund make it three straight Bundesliga wins, beating Paderborn 3-0 with a late Nmecha brace

Borussia Dortmund are three for three. A 3-0 win over newly promoted SC Paderborn 07 at Signal Iduna Park kept Niko Kovač's side perfect in the 2026-27 Bundesliga, though the scoreline flatters how one-sided the closing stages actually were — Dortmund needed a fast start and two late substitute goals to turn a tight, tense afternoon into a comfortable one.

Fabio Silva did the early damage, latching onto a Serhou Guirassy through ball inside five minutes to give the hosts the ideal start. From there, though, Paderborn refused to fold. The visitors pressed for long spells of the first half and kept Dortmund without a second goal all the way to the hour mark, holding out against a home side that had scored nine goals in its previous three matches across all competitions.

Nmecha arrives, and it is over in nine minutes

Kovač turned to his bench after the hour, sending on Felix Nmecha alongside Carney Chukwuemeka and Marcel Sabitzer, and the substitutions changed the shape of the game almost immediately. Nmecha's first involvement of note came on 80 minutes: a body feint to open space, then a clinical finish set up by Maximilian Beier to make it 2-0. Paderborn had barely absorbed that blow when Nmecha struck again in the 89th minute, meeting a Sabitzer cross with an acrobatic scissor kick that needed no second look — by Wikimedia's data-driven read of the chance, a strike with barely an 8% probability of going in, and the kind of goal that turns a routine home win into a highlight reel.

Paderborn's afternoon summed up their evening in one number: zero shots on target, despite the pressure they had generated for long stretches. It is the mark of a Bundesliga newcomer that can make the game uncomfortable for 60 minutes but still leaves with nothing to show for it — the gap that shows up not on the clock but on the finishing end of the pitch.

Match facts

• 5' — Fabio Silva (Borussia Dortmund), assisted by Serhou Guirassy
• 80' — Felix Nmecha (Borussia Dortmund), assisted by Maximilian Beier
• 89' — Felix Nmecha (Borussia Dortmund), assisted by Marcel Sabitzer

Only the xG figure is included here — bundesliga.com's own report described Dortmund's shot and possession numbers only in general terms ("controlled", "multiple") without giving Paderborn's side of the ledger a matching number, so the count stays out of the table rather than mixing a hard figure with an estimate. Nico Schlotterbeck, back from injury, captained the side, and Silva took Man of the Match with 43% of the fan vote ahead of Nmecha's cameo.

Third straight win to open the season

This is now three wins from three Bundesliga games for Dortmund, following up matchday-1 and matchday-2 victories over Hamburger SV and Hoffenheim with a third clean sheet-adjacent result — Paderborn's non-existent shots on target meaning Alexander Meyer effectively had a quiet night behind a defence that did not need testing. The only blemish on an otherwise perfect run across competitions was the German Super Cup defeat to Bayern Munich in August, which does not count toward the league table.

Dortmund had opened matchday 3 third in the table on six points from two games, level on points with the two sides above them but with a slightly lower goal difference. A third straight league win, on top of the midweek Champions League victory over Villarreal, keeps them firmly among the Bundesliga's early pace-setters heading into the international break, with the group above them — Augsburg, Freiburg and Elversberg — all having started the campaign unbeaten too.

What's next for Paderborn

For Paderborn, this was a step back after a promising start to life back in the top flight — a 0-0 draw with Mainz on the opening weekend suggested a side capable of frustrating bigger opponents, and for an hour at Signal Iduna Park they did exactly that. The problem, as it has been for a lot of promoted sides walking into Dortmund's ground, was that an hour was not enough. They still have not scored a Bundesliga goal this season, and finding one before the fixtures get any easier is now the priority heading into the next international window.