RB Leipzig vs Borussia Dortmund

The stakes are high for RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund as they lock horns in a must-win Bundesliga encounter at the Red Bull Arena.

Leipzig’s 39 points pre-round is their joint-fewest after 25 rounds of a Bundesliga season as the pressure starts to mount on head coach Marco Rose. Last weekend’s 0-0 draw at Freiburg left ‘Die Roten Bullen’ at just one win from nine league outings since the calendar year flipped to 2025 (D6, L2), opening up a three-point gap to fourth-placed Eintracht Frankfurt. Staring down the barrel of a five-match winless run for the first time in their top-flight history, Leipzig will relish Dortmund’s visits despite going down 2-1 in November’s reverse fixture. Indeed, they’ve won six of their last eight competitive H2Hs (L2), including a comprehensive 4-1 victory on this ground in April 2024. 

Meanwhile, Dortmund defied their domestic form woes to lock down a quarter-final berth in the Champions League with a dramatic 2-1 win at Lille in midweek, bouncing back from a dismal 1-0 league home loss to Augsburg last weekend. Stuck in mid-table with an evenly balanced record (W10, D5, L10), Niko Kovac’s men can’t afford a slip-up here to restore their hopes of securing a top-four finish. Indeed, they lag seven points behind the top-four pace, largely thanks to their poor traveling record this season (W3, D2, L7). Consistency has been another issue, with ‘Die Borussen’ alternating between winning (2) and losing (2) across their last four away league games, with three of those four results (wins/losses) yielding an identical 2-0 scoreline.