A Borussia Dortmund rival is earning plenty of brownie points: things could get tight for Jonathan Tah even with Jürgen Klopp

Anyone listening closely when Germany coach Jürgen Klopp discussed the selection of the second squad of his still-young tenure during the week may have noticed his comments on the centre-backs. "Those two were clear choices for me," he said, referring not to Jonathan Tah and Nico Schlotterbeck, the pair recently established in the Germany team, but to Waldemar Anton and Malick Thiaw.

The 30-year-old Borussia Dortmund player and the Newcastle United defender five years his junior had formed Klopp's central-defensive pairing in both of the previous internationals, against Serbia (2-0) and in Greece (0-0). "They did incredibly well, you simply have to say that," the Germany coach said of Anton and Thiaw, before explaining why they suited his style of play.

"Centre-backs must, first and foremost, defend, of course. That is the most important of all their jobs. But to play a certain kind of football, they also have to embrace that approach. In other words, if we want to press high but the lads only feel comfortable when they can touch the line of their own penalty area, we have a problem," Klopp said. Anton and Thiaw, in his view, had shown they could defend boldly.

Against an Elversberg side who sat deep for long stretches but kept looking to counter-attack, Anton gave Klopp more evidence on Saturday afternoon. The defender has shown the same qualities not just across 180 minutes with Germany against Serbia and in Greece, but consistently for months in a BVB shirt.

Time and again, Anton stepped out of the back four to stop potential counter-attacks by the Saarland side. He timed his challenges well and anticipated danger. When he stayed back as the last line of defence, he made the right decisions and produced important blocks.

On the ball, Anton also fits Klopp's idea of a bold defender. His clever vertical passes regularly take several opponents out of the game and find team-mates in space to drive the attack forward.

Tah, of course, has often shown that he, too, will defend boldly and take risks for Bayern Munich. But that does not guarantee him a place alongside Schlotterbeck at the finals in North America. The pair had established themselves in the Germany team in the build-up to the World Cup, before the Dortmund player's injury.

At club level, Tah is no longer an automatic starter this season, with rival Min-Jae Kim taking his place on the bench in one or two important matches recently. Anton has another advantage: he already plays alongside Schlotterbeck, who is likely to start for Germany, at Dortmund. Friday's match in Serbia could show whether their club partnership will become Germany's central-defensive pairing too.

Booked for a tactical foul after just over 20 minutes, Felix Nmecha had to take care as he tried to contain Elversberg's quick transitions. Another tactical foul could easily have brought a second yellow card.

At half-time, Sky asked Dortmund assistant coach Robert Kovac whether the midfielder should come off. "I think he's intelligent enough to judge that," replied the brother of head coach Niko Kovac, dismissing the suggestion.

That faith paid off. After the interval, Nmecha became Dortmund's match-winner. In the 55th minute, following excellent work by Fabio Silva, he finished cleverly from around 18 metres, beating SVE goalkeeper Nicolas Kristof with a well-placed low shot inside the near post.

Fifteen minutes later, Nmecha made it 2-0 with another fine finish, this time from slightly further out (around 25 metres). His two goals helped the side second in the table secure an expected but hard-fought 2-1 win, an important result in their long-distance contest with leaders Bayern Munich.

Kovac's decision to trust Nmecha to avoid another booking gave Dortmund far more than two goals. At the post-match press conference, the Croatian praised what the 26-year-old brought to the side. "With his presence, his dynamism, his technique," he was immensely important to Dortmund, Kovac explained. "He can resolve many situations so quickly with the way he turns his body. That makes his team-mates better."

Entering what Kovac calls his "peak-performance age", Nmecha still has "room for improvement". Dortmund felt his absence in the five league matches he missed through injury last season. "You could see then that our play was a little sluggish," Kovac recalled. "With him, we have a completely different dimension. That's why I'm glad he's here."

Despite the odd dip in form this season and spells when Nmecha has looked a little tired, Kovac does not want to do without such an influential player. "In terms of talent and technique, he is one of the best midfielders in the world," Dortmund sporting director Ole Book said after the win over Elversberg on Sky. "If he then adds finishing like he did today, he certainly has the shot for it, there aren't many who are better."

Dortmund goalkeeper Gregor Kobel wanted a little credit for the shot Nmecha hit at 124 km/h for his second goal. "That's Felix, what can you say? A world-class player," the Swiss goalkeeper told Dortmund's YouTube channel, adding with a grin: "Maybe he hits the ball like that because I always push him so hard in training."

In the 37th minute at Borussia Dortmund, Elversberg captain Lukas Pinckert injured his ankle in one of the ninth Bundesliga matchday's most-discussed incidents and had to come off.

Referee Harm Osmers was right not to show Dortmund's Daniel Svensson a red card. The Swede caught Pinckert full on the ankle with his studs showing, so the so-called "contact image" pointed towards a red card under the rules. But since the introduction of VAR, treating that image as the decisive test for a red card has become an unwelcome habit. It ignores how challenges unfold, particularly when, as here, Svensson showed not the slightest hint of malicious intent.

Had Pinckert been carrying the ball and played a pass before the sliding Svensson caught him after the ball was long gone, a red card would have been justified. That was not the sequence here. Svensson tried to reach a pass from Carney Chukwuemeka with his left foot and direct it into the middle of the penalty area. The Dortmund left-back slid in with every chance of reaching the ball.

Pinckert darted between Svensson and the ball and poked it away. Within hundredths of a second, Svensson's attempt to reach it instead caught Pinckert. The Swede could no longer pull out, and Pinckert suffered an ankle injury. Given the absence of intent and the way the challenge unfolded, Osmers could have shown a yellow card, but surely not a red.

Watch the incident repeatedly, especially in slow motion, and the contact with Pinckert's ankle looks like a red card in isolation. Judging potential sendings-off from that image alone, without accounting for how the players reached that point, cannot be in football's interests.

In January, World Cup winner Mats Hummels made a similar argument when Svensson received a red card for a similar challenge in Dortmund's Champions League match at Tottenham Hotspur. "It's unfortunate, but that's how it's being refereed at the moment. For me, it's not a red card. It's a classic freeze-frame red card that, when you look at how it developed, does not warrant a sending-off," Hummels said at the time as a television pundit on Prime Video.

Saturday's incident also sparked a debate between two former professionals in the Sky studio. "Svensson doesn't see Pinckert at all. He misses the ball by two centimetres; he wants to play the ball. He doesn't see his opponent or anything else, he just wants to play the ball […] It's a combination of things; these are things that happen in football," said Dietmar Hamann, who agreed with Osmers' decision not to show a red card. Patrick Helmes disagreed.

"The contact image couldn't be any clearer, and the risk of injury couldn't be any greater. I agree with you, Didi, that he didn't mean to do it. But there were plenty of things I didn't mean to do either, and I still got them wrong," said former Germany striker Helmes. Former Germany player Hamann countered: "You've already disqualified yourself by using the words 'contact image'."

Afterwards, Osmers told Sky that, having seen the footage, he could have shown a red card under the current rules. He might have done so had VAR intervened and sent him to the monitor. Patrick Hanslbauer, in the VAR room in Cologne, stayed silent.