Marco Reus: A Dortmund Boy, A Dortmund Man, A Dortmund Legend
From Jurgen Klopp to Thomas Tuchel, from Lucien Favre to Edin Terzic – Marco Reus has been a mainstay at Dortmund for almost twelve years. 2024 will mark his final season at the club, with both player and club opting to move on at the end of his current contract. Despite his career in North-Rhine-Westphalia seeing many injuries and shortcomings, Reus stayed loyal to his club through thick and thin.
There’s many stories of local lads rising through the ranks of their childhood club, from Trent Alexander-Arnold at Liverpool to German icon Phillipp Lahm. Rarer, however, is the case of a youngster going through his local academy who parts from the club only to rejoin later on.
Marco Reus would take the latter path, leaving the Borussia Dortmund youth setup in 2006 to join Rot-Weiss Ahlen, a third-tier club 60 kilometres away from his home. He would capture eyes while playing for RW’s second team with only limited gametime, scoring 3 goals in 6 games.
This would lead to a promotion to the first team in 2007, where over the next two seasons he would contribute 5 goals in 42 games for the club, four of which came in the 2007-08 season which would see Ahlen compete in the second-tier for only the second spell in its history.
This season would prompt interest from top division club Borussia Mönchengladbach, who would sign him in the summer of ‘08 for a total of a million euros. The following few seasons, especially the early 2010s, would see the midfielder develop into a Bundesliga star.
His final season at M’gladbach under French coach Lucien Favre would amass 30 goal contributions in 32 games, culminating in Reus winning Bundesliga Player of the Year. Halfway through that season, a familiar name had come calling. Borussia Dortmund wanted Marco Reus back.
He would agree to join back with his childhood club at the end of the 2011-12 season, and over the next few years he would become a key piece in one of the most beloved sides of the 21st century – Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund. A trifecta of Robert Lewandowski, Mario Götze and Reus would take the club to the Champions League final in May 2013.
This would mark their first time in the final since winning the competition in 1997, and even though the club would fall short of lifting the trophy for a second time, it was the attractive and aggressive playstyle that Reus and Dortmund played that captured fans’ hearts.
Bayern’s dominance of the German top flight for the next ten seasons would lead to Dortmund seriously struggling for accolades. But for all the club’s shortcomings in domestic competition, Reus would make up for in personal awards. He would win the Bundesliga Player of the Season a further two times, in 2013-14 and 2018-19. And although a Bundesliga trophy would elude him for his entire career, he and Dortmund would come runners-up seven times between 2012 and 2022.
Reus’ accolades are not necessarily what make him so beloved to Dortmund fans. A very intelligent player in his prime, he had the technical qualities and vision to perform one-twos in the middle of the pitch, while also having the crossing ability and pace to be deployed on the wing.
He was also a useful player when it came to pressing, and as he progressed later in his career was happy to drop back and put in a defensive shift – adding box-to-box elements into his game. He was, for the better part of ten years, Dortmund’s star player and who they based the team around.
But there is still a lingering question of “What if?” What if Dortmund had managed to keep their iconic squad from the early 2010s together for a bit longer and usurp Bayern of their dominant status? But, a more potent question might be this – what if Reus hadn’t spent a large amount of his prime suffering from injury? He spent over 1,200 days either suffering or recovering from injuries, which saw him miss a large amount of his age-27 and 28 seasons.
As his career at Dortmund winded to a close, there was one last chance for him to go out with a bang. The 2022-23 season had ended in heartbreaking fashion, with Dortmund missing out on the Bundesliga title on the final matchday of the season following a 2-2 draw to Augsburg in a game they had to win.
But, on the 1st of June, 2024, BVB would play in the Champions League Final against Real Madrid. It would be poetic for Reus to sign off holding the trophy that eluded him twelve years prior. But it was not to be – goals from Dani Carvajal and Vinicius Jr. would see Dortmund and Reus trophyless yet again.
New pastures await for Marco Reus, and teammates past and present made sure to give him the sendoff he deserved. Fellow Dortmund player Mats Hummels spoke on Reus, saying “I loved your style as a teammate and I think we had a very special bond on the pitch. You’re a great guy and an amazing player, and I wish you all the very best for whatever you do in the future. I’m glad we got to play so many games together, especially for BVB.”
Ex-Dortmund coach Jürgen Klopp said of the midfielder “I’d like to congratulate [Reus] for a wonderful career. I’m so proud that I was part of it. And that I was involved in bringing him back to BVB. So I’m taking 0.003% of the credit. I wish him all the best for what comes next.”
Looking forward, a move stateside seems imminent. LA Galaxy have already come calling, but in a strange turn of events will have to pay a fee of $350,000 to Charlotte FC as the North Carolina based club obtained his ‘discovery rights.’ The MLS could prove fruitful for Reus, as he will be given the chance again to be one of the biggest names in a domestic league.
Marco Reus never won a league title, or a Champions League. But he did win hearts of both German fans and football fans on the whole, and that’s arguably just as important as the former. When Reus leaves on July 1st, there will be an irreplaceable hole in Dortmund’s squad. They will lose a goalscorer, an assister, a winger, a midfielder, a fan and a captain, and that will be hard to remedy.
By: Jude Short / @Jayesse66
Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Alex Pantling / Getty Images