Legend has it that the teenage Franz Beckenbauer was moved back into defence by a youth coach who was afraid the upright, stylish midfielder would run into opponents keen "to let him know they were there", in Kevin Keegan parlance. At 9.55pm on Friday night, the BayArena saw a scene destined to go down in football folklore, too. The Dortmund midfielder Mario Götze became possibly the first ever Bundesliga footballer substituted for being too good in a game.

The 18-year-old – on the pitch in place of the Japanese midfielder Shinji Kagawa, who is at the Asian Cup – played a decent, but unspectacular first half in which his team seemed content to frustrate Leverkusen. Dortmund didn't create much going forward but their tireless running made the one serious title contender that is left look listless. Borussia under Jürgen Klopp are to space what Takeru Kobayashi is to hot dogs: they eat it up until the opposition is blue on the face and going down with cramps.

Three perfectly executed strikes – and some awful defending from the hosts – in the space of six minutes after the break brought the title race to a premature end. Budding international Kevin Großkreutz, 22, scored a brace (49', 53') before Götze added a third (55'). "I've never seen anything like it in my life," said the BVB president Reinhard Rauball, not a man prone to superlatives.

Dortmund were cruising, and we're not talking Al Pacino as a leather-clad undercover cop here: their mixture of incredibly hard work and freedom of expression up front was simply sublime. "They play an elegant, passionate and imaginative football," said Jupp Heynckes after the final whistle. Götze, buoyed by his team's dominance, played himself into a kind of dream-like state where every flick and turn was coming off. In what was only the 12th league start of his career, the son of a data technology professor at Dortmund's Technical University was about to get carried away with his own brilliance and run the risk of getting done by one of his humiliated opponents when Klopp intervened. Götze was taken off for the striker Lucas Barrios.

Dortmund are protecting their prodigious talent off the pitch as well. They're wary of history repeating itself: Lars Ricken, 17, was once hailed as the "talent of the century" but ended up buckling under the pressure and never living up to his potential. Götze is lucky that he's surrounded by players who are only a couple of years older, they have taken all the success in their stride. "We are incredibly grounded," Klopp never tires of saying. The club's insistence on down-playing their championship credentials seems increasingly forced in the light of a 12-point gap at the top ("We'd be mad to think we've won anything," said the coach) but it's obvious that the players are too busy enjoying themselves to lose touch with reality.

Even their winter holiday arrangements were conspicuously unassuming. While Großkreutz flew to Brazil to meet team-mate Dede's family, the Serbian defender Neven Subotic and a couple of mates drove around Europe in a clapped-out VW camper van. Nobody knows whether their togetherness can survive the trappings of more wealth and success but, for the moment, the old socially romantic ideal of 11 friends looks like being put into practice. "Großkreutz, [Nuri] Sahin, Götze or Marcel Schmelzer would surely do well elsewhere, too," wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung. "But as a group, especially, they seem to possess a might and inner light that could take them into the European top level." It's true: when the holding midfielder Sven Bender, one of the team's most energetic runners, picked up an injury before the break, Mats Hummels said they "all decided to do a few extra metres more for him". All Leverkusen could do is get one goal back late on through Stefan Kiessling (80). "So much for all the talk about us not coping with pressure and all this rubbish," said the Borussia CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke.

The next day, Bayern Munich's Thomas Müller was casting envious glances at the champions-elect. "The whole of Germany wanted things to get exciting [at the top] again, but they make it look so easy." "The good news is: we are back and playing just as well as before the break," said Klopp, a tad more defensively.

It'll be interesting to know what they make of Dortmund's unstoppable run in the Frankfurt headquarters of the DFL (German Football League), where they've worked so hard in recent years to counter the Bundesliga's image as a one-team competition. Borussia are on course to secure the title as early as March. Nominally, 17 other teams are still involved but to find a league this one-sided, you'd have to dig out the rare German vinyl promo of "All I ever wanted".

Talking points

• Before the start of the season, the Hannover 96 manager Mirko Slomka looked like he might be the first manager to part company with his club, whether by mutual agreement or otherwise. A brilliant first half of the season has changed the focus to renewing his deal but things have not progressed as smoothly as anticipated. Slomka, the local papers reported, pushed the president Martin Kind to the edge of reason last week: a few days before their match away to Frankfurt, the 43-year-old asked to be released from his contract with immediate effect. Both parties tried to make light of the disagreement when it was leaked. "In negotiations, it's customary to play a game of poker," said Kind, while Slomka maintained that their "differences weren't big enough" to make working together in the summer unfeasible.

It was the worst possible preparation for the match at the Commerzbank-Arena but maybe these things are always overplayed by the media. The 96 players certainly didn't seem to mind. Mohammed Abdellaoue (15min), Christian Schulz (21) and Didier Konan Ya (89) scored against the makeshift Eintracht defence; the goalkeeper and ex-Manchester United trainee Ron-Robert Zieler, a surprise starter, had little to do. The 3-0 win over the tired looking home side heaved Hannover into the unlikely role of Dortmund's fiercest title rivals.

• As if "Hannover in second place after 18 games" wasn't incongruous enough a line, the Bundesliga came up with another mad-cap stat this weekend: all four penalties were missed, a mishap unheard of in 32 years. Those desperate to cling on to football stereotypes may find a bit of solace in the fact that three-quarters of those responsible for the slightly less than efficient conversion rate were thankfully non-German players (Papiss Cissé, Freiburg; Javier Pinola, Nürnberg; Grafite, Wolfsburg) while the Germany captain Philipp Lahm got a little unlucky and hit the inside of the post.

The miss kind of summed up Bayern's afternoon at the Volkswagen-Arena: they dominated proceedings, took the lead – Thomas Müller managed to get his leg into the way of a Diego Benaglio clearance – but once again failed to kill off lesser opponents. An untimely attempt at a Zidane turn from Bastian Schweinsteiger in his own penalty box led to Sascha Riether's 85th-minute equaliser. The point will buy Steve McClaren a bit more time but was not enough for the champions to keep up any pretensions of catching Dortmund. "We have to accept and respect what they're doing," said Arjen Robben, the happiest Bayern player after coming through his comeback on the awful pitch unscathed. Franck Ribéry was less fortunate. His knee injury, however, turned out to be a lot less severe than anticipated: he should be back in training in 10 days' time.

• It may take considerably longer for Ruud van Nistelrooy to wear the Hamburg shirt again, if at all. The Dutchman, scorer of the decisive goal in the 1-0 away win to Schalke, wants to return to Real Madrid on loan until the end of the season. "They are the only club that make think that way," gushed the 34-year-old. "But I'm not free. The two clubs have to agree." Matters are complicated by the fact that Madrid don't want to pay a single peseta, let alone a euro, for the striker, and even more so because it's unclear whom the Spaniards should actually talk to. The sporting director Bastian Reinhardt is reportedly about to be replaced by the DFB sporting director Matthias Sammer and the old "Kopfball-Ungeheuer" (header-monster) Horst Hrubesch may be in the frame for Armin Veh's job. "Incredible," Louis van Gaal's catch-line, becomes more appropriate by the minute.

Results: Leverkusen 1-3 Dortmund, Schalke 0-1 Hamburg, Stuttgart 1-0 Mainz, Bremen 2-1 Hoffenheim, St Pauli 2-2 Freiburg, Nürnberg 0-1 Gladbach,Wolfsburg 1-1 Bayern, Frankfurt 0-3 Hannover, Kaiserslautern 1-1 Köln.

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