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ESPN staff 7y

Christian Pulisic: Dortmund showed 'good heart' to fight back for draw

Christian Pulisic said Borussia Dortmund "showed good heart" to fight back after he scored a late equaliser to salvage a 3-3 draw at Ingolstadt on Saturday.

The U.S. international, who only entered the game at half-time, started Dortmund's rally with the club trailing 3-1 in the 69th minute.

The 18-year-old slipped a ball into the box and Adrian Ramos pounced on it to cut the lead to 3-2, and Pulisic then scored the equaliser in the 92nd minute, prodding home from close range after Orjan Nyland saved Lukasz Piszczek's initial effort.

Pulisic spoke to reporters in English after the game, saying his emotions were "too much" to try German, despite a day earlier showing off an impressive handle on the language on Dortmund's YouTube page.

"It was very exciting," he said. "Obviously we would like to come up with three points, but it was good to tie the game up in the end."

He later added: "We didn't have a great start at all obviously, they took advantage of some set pieces but we definitely finished strong and showed good heart."

But Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel said a draw was nothing to celebrate after such a poor start to the game, when Almog Cohen and Dario Lezcano gave the hosts a comfortable lead.

"Would you accept congratulations on taking a point? No, I don't think so," he said. "In the first half, we weren't up to Bundesliga standard. We could have been even further behind."

Dortmund have featured a very young lineup this season -- including three teenagers in the Champions League at Sporting on Tuesday -- and Tuchel said many of his players aren't accustomed to such a heavy workload.

"We got lucky, but you mustn't forget that, in a way, we had a lot of youth team players in the side," he said. "Players like Julian Weigl and Matthias Ginter are experienced, but they're still eligible to play for the under-21s and are not used to the routine of going from the Champions League to the Bundesliga, and back again.

"So that's understandable, but the second half was good. Obviously we're disappointed because we expected to play a certain way from the start, but maybe you can't expect to do that."

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