“He is,” said Edin Terzic, “a living legend.” The stars have not always aligned for Marco Reus as he has wanted or deserved but on this first weekend of May, everything clicked into place.
This was the first part of a two-stage tribute at Signal Iduna Park for one of Borussia Dortmund’s most beloved players of the modern era. It was emotional – and emotion is what this arena always does best. With his good friend Jadon Sancho looking on from the centre circle, clapping and spellbound, Reus approached the Yellow Wall for his applause at full-time, his young daughter in his arms.
Reus and the fans will have one more chance to say goodbye to each other, on the final day of the season at home to Darmstadt. Much of the mood of that last farewell will be defined by what happens in Paris on Tuesday, where Reus and his team go hoping to do what they did back in 2013, when he was coming to the end of his first season at his hometown club. Going to one of the strongholds of European football as underdogs, hoping to put the finishing touches on a true exploit and book a trip to the Champions League final at Wembley.
When Reus and the rest – Robert Lewandowski, Mario Götze, Mats Hummels, Ilkay Gündogan and company – danced in front of their fans high in the Bernabéu 11 years ago, celebrating having edged out the team’s most famous club on a hot, hot Madrid night, he was different, and BVB were different. This famous old club from industrial north-west Germany, back from a brush with death in 2005, was ready to open itself up to the world, with the branding of their charisma and atmosphere, Echte Liebe (Real Love), launching. This young, exciting team with Reus at the helm were about to paint the planet yellow and black. Except Wembley 2013 turned out to be a pinnacle, rather than a basecamp on the climb to greatness.
Reus has often been the face of Dortmund, for better and for worse, in the ensuing years. “Reus and BVB,” as the great Stephan Uersfeld wrote for NTV in 2022, “are still much more outside of Germany than the eternal runners-up in the Bundesliga; they have become part of pop culture in the best sense of the word.” Internationally, Reus was synonymous with their approachable image but locally he was tied up with the team’s inability to get it done when it really counted, with the sense that player and club were becoming sheen over substance.
It feels sometimes as if he is judged as the captain that let his team wilt under pressure in last season’s title run-in, rather than the local boy made good who gave €500,000 to help local businesses struggling in the pandemic. His contract extension in 2015, in the face of strong interest from Spain and England, came to be a symbol of mutual love but also of collective underachievement.
On the field Reus provided us – them – with the sublime, the charming and those agonising falls with the finishing line in sight. The sweeping volley on the run in front of the Südtribune that set BVB on the way to victory over Bayern Munich in autumn 2018 to suggest that, yes, this year could be different. The Batman and Robin celebration with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the 2015 Revierderby victory over Schalke. The studs-up challenge on Suat Serdar against the same local rivals in 2019 that ended in a red card, derby defeat and Dortmund’s title push going up in flames.
And then there were the injuries, robbing him of the chance of immortality at the 2014 World Cup with Germany and pushing him to decline Hansi Flick’s call for Euro 2020 because he felt his body could take no more. That when Reus finally won a trophy with Dortmund, the 2017 DFB Pokal, he was substituted at half-time in the final having sustained a partial tear of his ACL, said it all. Reus celebrated that night with a bright yellow bandage wrapped tightly around his damaged right knee.
Hoffenheim 1-1 Leipzig, Köln 0-0 Freiburg, Wolfsburg 3-0 Darmstadt, Werder Bremen 2-2 Mönchengladbach, Stuttgart 3-1 Bayern Munich, Dortmund 5-1 Augsburg, Heidenheim 1-1 Mainz, Eintracht Frankfurt 1-5 Bayer Leverkusen, Union Berlin 3-4 Bochum
Now, even as a bit-part player, there is the chance to sign off in the ultimate style, as the second leg against Paris Saint-Germain looms. Reus said it his own words, characteristically understated rather than as the peacock that the rest of the world outside his city (wrongly) sees. As he stood in front of an empty Südtribune in his exit announcement video it was about the club, not about him. “We want to bring this trophy to Dortmund again,” he tells the camera, deadpan. “That is why it is important that this decision has been made.”
And that is why he had his chance to shine against Augsburg on Saturday afternoon, with Terzic resting all 10 outfield players that started in last week’s rousing first-leg victory over PSG ahead of the return. Reus dazzled like in the old days, with a goal and a pair of assists in a 5-1 stroll. There was a passing of the torch of sorts with 18-year-old Kjell Wätjen, the author of an outstanding full debut in midfield, sending the magnificent pass that gave Reus the pinnacle of his afternoon, a beautifully judged finish over the advancing Tomas Koubek to make the score 4-1 just after the half-hour. It was his 155th Bundesliga goal.
It led to a far happier communion with the home hardcore than this time last year, when player and fans shared bitter tears as Reus’s last hope of a Bundesliga title with BVB slipped away. That felt like the denouement, a nearly but not quite after so much promise. Cruelly, it was probably the most apt ending for Reus at Dortmund, if certainly not the one he would have chosen. Maybe, had BVB kept their nerve and lifted the Meisterschale last year, he would have taken the opportunity to exit stage left in the best way possible. Now, this week and maybe in London, he has the chance to write a different finale, or his teammates for him – which would be his ideal ending.
Talking points
• Bayern have their own date with destiny at the Bernabéu on Wednesday, which makes it all the more remarkable that Thomas Tuchel didn’t protect all of his probable starters in the 3-1 loss at Stuttgart. Raphaël Guerreiro, a difference maker as a half-time substitute in the first leg, went over on his ankle in the first 20 minutes and sustained ligament damage which nixes his hopes. At least, for the coach’s sake, the plus is that his choices are overshadowed in the news cycle by the latest candidates to succeed him, with former Bayern coach Erik Ten Hag and under-pressure Benfica manager Roger Schmidt potentially entering the fray.
• Stuttgart, after another incredible result, could pinch second place from Bayern – they are only two points behind, and already 34 points better off than in the whole of last season – just like Leverkusen, who showed they are over their post-title semi-slumber. The champions followed up Thursday’s outstanding Europa League semi-final first leg win at Roma with a 5-1 demolition of Eintracht Frankfurt on their own patch. They are now 48 unbeaten in all competitions, level with Eusébio’s Benfica between 1963 and 1965.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayer Leverkusen | 32 | 59 | 84 |
| 2 | Bayern Munich | 32 | 49 | 69 |
| 3 | Stuttgart | 32 | 34 | 67 |
| 4 | RB Leipzig | 32 | 38 | 63 |
| 5 | Borussia Dortmund | 32 | 24 | 60 |
| 6 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 32 | 1 | 45 |
| 7 | Freiburg | 32 | -12 | 41 |
| 8 | Hoffenheim | 32 | -8 | 40 |
| 9 | Augsburg | 32 | -8 | 39 |
| 10 | Heidenheim | 32 | -8 | 38 |
| 11 | Werder Bremen | 32 | -9 | 38 |
| 12 | Wolfsburg | 32 | -11 | 37 |
| 13 | Borussia M'gladbach | 32 | -7 | 33 |
| 14 | VfL Bochum | 32 | -24 | 33 |
| 15 | Union Berlin | 32 | -25 | 30 |
| 16 | Mainz | 32 | -17 | 29 |
| 17 | Cologne | 32 | -30 | 24 |
| 18 | Darmstadt | 32 | -46 | 17 |
