Tella lights Leverkusen fire as gap to Dortmund grows bigger than ever | Andy Brassell

England-born forward’s thunderous volley shocked Sahin’s flu-racked side who face fight for 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.

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.

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