Union Berlin hold Borussia Dortmund to a 0-0 draw despite three early yellow cards

On paper this was the kind of fixture that gets filed before kick-off: bottom of the table hosting second place, a side with five goals in five games against a visiting attack that had scored eleven. Union Berlin tore that script up. A goalless draw at the Alte Försterei is their best result of the season by any measure that matters to a club still searching for its first win in two months.

Dortmund started the game in disarray rather than dominance. Ethan Nwaneri was booked inside the first minute, Waldemar Anton followed him into referee's notebook at 7', and Serhou Guirassy made it three yellow cards for the visitors by the 14th minute. Three bookings before the quarter-hour mark is as rattled a start as a title-chasing side is likely to have, and Union made them pay for it with territory, if not with goals.

A game with no goals but plenty of cards

• 1' — Ethan Nwaneri (Borussia Dortmund), yellow
• 7' — Waldemar Anton (Borussia Dortmund), yellow
• 14' — Serhou Guirassy (Borussia Dortmund), yellow
• 33' — Janik Haberer (1. FC Union Berlin), yellow
• 35' — Tom Rothe (1. FC Union Berlin), yellow
• 63' — Tim Skarke (1. FC Union Berlin), yellow

Six yellow cards in total and not one red, a frantic first quarter-hour settling into a more cagey afternoon from there. Dortmund had the better of the possession, as the gulf in league position suggested they should, but they managed only two shots on target across the full ninety minutes against a Union defence that refused to be stretched.

Match stats

Line-ups

• 1. FC Union Berlin (4-2-3-1): Frederik Rønnow — Felix Uduokhai, Zeno Van Den Bosch, Tom Rothe — Janik Haberer, Michel Aebischer, Rani Khedira, András Schäfer — Tim Skarke, Kastriot Imeri, Jeong Woo-Yeong
• Borussia Dortmund (3-4-2-1): Gregor Kobel — Waldemar Anton, Nico Schlotterbeck, Kouakou Gadou — Felix Nmecha, Jobe Bellingham, Daniel Svensson, Julian Ryerson — Serhou Guirassy, Maximilian Beier, Ethan Nwaneri

Zero shots on target is no accident for Union

Union not registering a single shot on target in the match says as much about their approach as it does about their attacking options. This was a side set up to defend a result, not to chase one, and for 90 minutes it worked. A club that had conceded seven to Bayern Munich and three to Schalke in its last four Bundesliga outings instead kept a clean sheet — its first of the season — with a plan built around denying space rather than creating it.

Union's long losing run finally stops

Union went into the round bottom of the table on 4 points from five games, a run that read draw, loss, loss, loss, win — the win coming against SV Elversberg last time out, their first in over a month. A point against the division's second-placed side does more for confidence than the table position suggests: this was a match Union were expected to lose heavily, and they instead became only the fourth team all season to stop Dortmund from scoring in the league.

Dortmund, by contrast, arrived unbeaten in five league games — wins over Hamburger SV, Hoffenheim, Paderborn and Stuttgart followed by a 2-2 draw at Werder Bremen — sitting second on 13 points — level on points and games played with league leaders Freiburg, trailing only on goal difference. That run also included a Champions League win over Villarreal, though it had been interrupted in Europe four days earlier by a 0-1 defeat at Bodø/Glimt. Still unbeaten in the Bundesliga this season, Dortmund leave Berlin having dropped points in the league for the second matchday running and three of their best-known names — Nwaneri, Anton and Guirassy — all having walked a disciplinary tightrope from inside the first quarter of an hour.

What's next

A first clean sheet of the season against a side of this calibre will matter more to Union than the solitary point does on its own — bottom of the table remains bottom of the table, but a performance like this is the kind of foundation a relegation fight is built on. Dortmund stay in the Bundesliga's top two but now know Freiburg have closed the gap to nothing on paper, and they will want a response that looks more like their first five matchdays than their sixth.