Tella lights Leverkusen fire as gap to Dortmund grows bigger than ever | Andy Brassell
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Englishman’s thunderous volley shocked Sahin’s flu-racked side who face a huge fight for a Champions League place. Friday night’s resumption always carried the threat of pushing us towards drawing hard and fast conclusions for the second half of the season. In the end the raising of the curtain was so dramatic as not to leave us any other choice. Twenty-four seconds into the Rückrunde and, as Nathan Tella’s volley thundered past Gregor Kobel, we had our emphatic notice that the balance of power at the top of this season’s Bundesliga is not about to change any time soon.
![[Leverkusen players celebrate with their fans after beating Dortmund]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/74312481a436fdbceb586be248438b4c5bf22317/0_0_5000_3333/master/5000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
It was not the quickest statement by the standards of Dortmund versus Leverkusen, of course. Ten years ago last August, Karim Bellarabi scored the Bundesliga’s fastest goal, nine seconds into this fixture in the opening match of the 2014-15 Bundesliga season. The winger’s rapid strike set the tone for what turned out to be Jürgen Klopp’s final season at the helm, symbolically snuffing out their hopes of doing something significant with the campaign almost before it had begun.
![[Julian Ryerson is left on his knees after Leverkusen’s third goal]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1762f6353fd0beda987f232d60bdcf53c19b40f6/0_0_5000_3333/master/5000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
A decade on the protagonists and the parameters might have differed, but for some the feeling it left didn’t. For Nuri Sahin, frustration then equalling frustration now, with a first home Bundesliga defeat of the season. For Leverkusen, everything has changed in the intervening period. They have not been without their problems, either during their double-winning campaign of last year or now; they went into this without Xabi Alonso’s crown prince. Florian Wirtz, like his teammate Exequiel Palacios, was late for the team rendezvous pre-match and accordingly left out of the starting lineup. His replacement Tella blew away the doubts, underlined his team’s versatility and vindicated the coach.
![[Harry Kane scores a penalty for Bayern]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/029d94bb645f490eeb360298e2e45f8f1f928e07/0_0_2110_1582/master/2110.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
