Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Haaland scored twice and set up another three goals as the hosts steamrolled past Eintracht Frankfurt 5-2 on Saturday to put down a marker in their Bundesliga opener.
Their five-star performance comes a day after champions Bayern Munich kicked off their league campaign with a 1-1 draw at Borussia Moenchengladbach, and was a perfect Bundesliga debut for coach Marco Rose on the Dortmund bench.
Dortmund face Bayern in Tuesday's German Super Cup.
"You cannot do much more. It was a very strong performance," said Rose. "The 25,000 fans in the stadium did a lot of good for us. Great goals, a lot of power."
"But it was all about starting well and we did that. There are things we need to improve but today's performance was outstanding."
"Erling constantly wants to improve. He has qualities that we saw today. We work together as a team. We talk a lot about Erling but it was a really strong team performance today."
It was captain Marco Reus who put his team in the driving seat in the 23rd minute, scoring from a Haaland assist, with Dortmund fans returning in limited numbers to the 81,000-capacity stadium.
A Felix Passlack own goal four minutes later did nothing to slow them down as Thorgan Hazard rifled them back into the lead in the 32nd after Reus combined with the 21-year-old Haaland, who had scored a hat-trick in their German Cup first round win last week, for yet another counter attack.
The hosts completed their first half goal rush with Haaland pouncing on a Stefan Ilsanker mistake to charge into the box and slot in for a two-goal lead in the 34th.
Gio Reyna added a fourth goal with a tap-in on the hour with Eintracht at the complete mercy of the bursting Dortmund runs that kept on coming. Another Haaland run earned him his second goal of the evening following a VAR review.
It was his 62nd goal in 61 matches for Dortmund in all competitions.
Fellow Norwegian Jens Petter Hauge scored late on his Bundesliga debut to somewhat improve the scoreline for Frankfurt.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ