Berlin (AFP)

Deprived of the "Yellow Wall" of its supporters, Borussia Dortmund defies in silence behind closed doors its neighbor Schalke on Saturday for the resumption of the Bundesliga (3.30 pm). But its young stars Jadon Sancho and Erling Braut Haaland hope to make noise.

The "Ruhr derby" between the yellow and blue enemy brothers, only 30 km apart, is usually THE match that ignites the region twice a season. For the first time, it will be played without supporters, but will not be without stakes: second in the ranking with four points behind, the BVB must win to hope to stay in contact with Bayern after this 26th day.

Heirs of the now disappeared mining world, Dortmund and Schalke 04 are strongholds of German football and play a major role in local popular culture: the average attendance of Borussia is 82,000 spectators, and 61,000 for Schalke!

This year, with the camera and the constraints of the health protocol, it will be "the most unusual derby in history", as stressed by Borussia manager Sebastian Kehl.

"When you play in Dortmund in front of 80,000 spectators, they push the team beyond its limits," admits Swiss BVB coach Lucien Favre: "It will be different, we will have to get used to it. We have to prepare not only technically, tactically or physically, but also mentally. "

"A derby without spectators makes your heart bleed," added Borussia sports director Michael Zorc. "Without them, we're going to need a lot more internal momentum and self-motivation."

- Four absent in Dortmund -

In two months of inactivity, the professionals have also lost their bearings, and were not even entitled to a friendly match before the resumption to run in the automatic systems.

How these young men, and in particular the two stars of 20 and 19 years of Borussia, the Englishman Sancho (14 goals and 16 assists in 25 games this season!) And the prodigious Norwegian Haaland, author of nine goals for his first eight matches in Germany, will they have digested the long period of confinement? No one can say until Saturday afternoon.

To help players and supervisors adapt, Borussia leaders called on a mental coach, former club player Philipp Laux.

On Saturday, Dortmund will be handicapped by the absence of four important players, captain and point guard Marco Reus, the two pivots of midfielder Emre Can and Axel Witsel, and defender Dan-Axel Zagadou, injured.

In fact, it would have been much better for Borussia to compete in this derby before the March hiatus. Since the recruitment in January of Haaland and the German international Can, the team has been on an extraordinary dynamic: seven victories in eight league games, with 27 goals scored. Schalke, however, remained on a black streak of seven games without a win.

- "Like a friendly match" -

But if the statistics of the season are favorable to Dortmund, those of the last years tell another story: the BVB has won only one of the last eight league duels against Schalke. Last year the Gelsenkirchen players even came to humiliate their rivals 4-2 at Signal Iduna Park, killing that day their last title hopes.

And nobody in Germany has forgotten the "derby of the century" of 2017, when Schalke snatched a 4-4 in Dortmund in injury time after being led 4-0 at break!

This time however, Schalke is as much in the dark as Dortmund. Coach David Wagner acknowledges that he has no idea what the level of his team is, because the poster actually looks like "the first friendly match in the start of the season."

"You have a week of training and you are playing your first game. You have no idea what's going to happen," he said.

© 2020 AFP