Borussia Dortmund general manager Hans-Joachim Watzke has blasted the aggressive approach adoptedby Bundesliga opponents against his side and has suggested they could follow suit.
Dortmund suffered a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday and manager Thomas Tuchel was dismayed with aggressive challenges Leverkusen committed without being punished.
Tuchel also recalled matches against Freiburg and Mainz earlier in the season where he felt the each team committed over 20 fouls each without being punished.
Watzke, speaking to German publicationBild, supported those claims and even suggested Dortmund should perhaps take the same aggressive approach against their opponents.
He said:"Perhaps we should go into the tackles harder and forget about winning the fair play prize.The fact is, people play very aggressively against us and that has nothing to do with being bad losers.
"Dortmund have always been the fairest side in recent years and we've got to look at whether this harder approach is becoming a trend."
The defeat meant Dortmund were unable to capitalise on Bayern Munich's shock draw against FC Koln but Tuchel questioned whether Leverkusen should have ended the match with 11 men.
"We again [had] 21 fouls [in our favour]," Tuchel told Sky. "We had to make substitutions due to injury. Castro and Rode were both unable to play on.
"We have to cope with a lot, our attacking players get fouled a lot. Boundaries have been crossed. Normally, a team would not end with 11 players if so many fouls are made throughout the game."