Sébastien Haller seems to have come to terms with the penalty he missed on the final day of the Bundesliga last season, which cost Dortmund the title. Since then, the Ivorian has not scored in the German championship.
The bad times continue. While Guinea’s Sehrou Guirassy (14 goals) and Nigeria’s Victor Boniface (7 goals) are currently on fire, Sébastien Haller, the most eagerly-awaited African striker in the Bundesliga, has yet to find the net. With Borussia this season, the Ivorian has only scored twice. And that was in a 6-1 German Cup triumph for the Yellow and Black against a modest regional division side.
Recruited for 31 million euros by Dortmund from Ajax Amsterdam in the summer of 2022, Haller is no longer a regular starter for BVB. He has only played 330 minutes in 9 league appearances and just 11 minutes in the Champions League. It’s a real setback that could worry Ivorian fans two months ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations, which Côte d’Ivoire is hosting from January 13 to February 11. But the Haller in the Elephants’ jersey is perhaps currently more on fire than his BVB counterpart.
During Côte d’Ivoire’s most recent training camp, the former AJ Auxerre player scored in each of his two appearances. He scored his country’s goals against South Africa (1-1) and Morocco (1-1). Despite his reduced playing time with the German club, Sébastien Haller should once again be in Jean Louis Gasset’s starting line-up for the Seychelles (November 17) and the trip to Gambia (November 20), as part of the first two rounds of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. It will be another opportunity for him to reassure the many Ivorian fans. Who knows, maybe the trend has really been reversed for this serial killer, who was criticized for being an elephant at club level and a mouse for the national team?
