Football: Salary System - Chapter 137: Reus at His Best (Patreon)

“What a spectacular match.”

There was even a trace of lingering excitement in Hellmann’s voice.

“Each team dominated one half. Bayern produced their best half of the season, while Dortmund once again turned their youth and energy into something magnificent!”

“This is also the first time since 2000 that Bayern have lost after taking the lead twice in the same match. For them, going ahead usually means winning. Today is the first time in 18 years that they’ve lost a game like this.”

“Exactly. Dortmund and Favre have successfully passed a very difficult test.”

Matthäus still had not forgotten his earlier talk about this being a major examination for Dortmund.

“In recent years, many fans may have felt that Der Klassiker had lost some of the suspense and significance it once carried. People had begun to assume that Bayern’s dominance was simply going to define the Bundesliga, both now and for years to come.

“But this season’s table, and what we saw in this match, have given supporters plenty of surprises.

“Of course, Bayern fans might describe those surprises rather differently.”

...

Long after the final whistle, the noise inside Westfalenstadion showed no sign of fading.

The South Stand was still bouncing. The entire stadium seemed like a heart that refused to stop beating, pumping yellow blood into every corner of Dortmund.

Reus stood near the center circle without joining his teammates’ celebration.

He watched Sancho leap onto Zayn from behind, with Achraf and Pulisic piling on top of them. He watched Akanji and Dahoud pump their fists toward the stands.

Those young faces looked as though they were in the middle of some grand coronation.

Reus suddenly smiled.

It was not as though Dortmund had never beaten Bayern over the years. He had scored against them himself and experienced Westfalenstadion at its wildest.

When Reus joined Dortmund, Klopp’s Black-and-Yellows had just won back-to-back Bundesliga titles.

He had thought he was arriving at the perfect time, that he would get to lift the Meisterschale with his own hands.

Instead came injuries, instability, coaching changes, and rebuilding.

Year after year, that silver shield never found its way into his hands.

If the DFL-Supercup was excluded, he had won only one trophy at club level: the 2017 DFB-Pokal.

For Dortmund’s captain, that was nowhere near enough.

But now, at last, fate had placed another opportunity in his hands.

Not far away, Zayn had already climbed out from beneath the pile of bodies. His blond hair was plastered messily across his forehead, while an almost brazen grin spread across his face.

Reus stopped dwelling on it and joined his teammates in celebration.

...

For the Dortmund supporters who had experienced that night at Westfalenstadion, the victory was something they could savor for the rest of November.

For others, however, the night left far less pleasant memories.

That same evening, Bild published a sharply worded report on its website.

“Bayern bosses showered in beer at Westfalenstadion!”

The report vividly described how the South Stand had erupted into complete madness after Zayn converted the penalty that put Dortmund ahead.

Some overexcited Dortmund supporters hurled their cups of beer into the air.

As a result, Bayern president Hoeness, seated in the VIP section beneath the stands, ended up with beer poured all over his head.

Rummenigge, sitting beside him, did not escape either.

The longtime Bayern executive, who had spent decades in German football and had seen just about everything, lost his usual composure and immediately turned around to angrily berate the Dortmund supporters above him.

Staff and security personnel hurried over to intervene, and for a moment the scene became chaotic.

For years, the traditional “beer shower” after winning the title had been a Bayern celebration.

But on this particular night, the team had lost, and the people running the club had been showered in beer themselves.

For the two Bayern executives, there was very little about this away trip worth remembering fondly.

Even so, Hoeness and Rummenigge showed some grace after the match by heading over to the away section to console the supporters who had traveled with the team to Westfalenstadion.

Whether their words did much good was another matter.

On a night like this, anything the losing side said was bound to sound hollow.

...

Unlike Bild’s tabloid angle, Kicker veteran reporter Karlheinz Wild approached the match with the rigor and attention to detail for which the publication was known, producing an in-depth analysis.

“During the World Cup this July, Kovac wrote a column for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Having only just taken charge of Bayern at the time, he argued that the trend in modern football was simple: speed overwhelms slowness.

“Just four months later, he brought an aging, slow-moving Bayern Munich side to Westfalenstadion and pushed it to its limits. For a while, they produced one of their sharpest performances of the season.

“Yet they still could not stop Dortmund’s fast, direct Black-and-Yellow storm.

“Kovac proved his own point, only in the last way he would have wanted.”

Wild then turned his attention to Dortmund.

“Almost everything that has made Favre’s team stand out this season was condensed into this one match:

“Vibrant young players, fast and intense football, and their fearsome second-half performances.

“They shattered Bayern’s experience and composure with speed and courage. They fell behind twice, equalized twice, and eventually completed the comeback, turning the seemingly impossible into reality.”

“Zayn Ryder once again showed exactly why he is called the ‘Zayn Emperor.’

“Perhaps what we are witnessing is not merely the development of an outstanding forward, but the emergence of a player who could come to define an era.”

“But the player who moved me most tonight was not Zayn. It was Marco Reus.”

“Reus has made the best start to a season of his entire career, and there are clear reasons behind his resurgence.

“The Dortmund star, so often plagued by injuries in the past, has remained remarkably healthy this season.

“From the summer of 2014 through the end of last season, Reus appeared in only around half of Dortmund’s Bundesliga matches. Nobody ever questioned his talent. Injuries simply clipped his wings again and again.”

“Reus’s outstanding form also owes a great deal to Favre. The two had already enjoyed a highly successful partnership together at Borussia Mönchengladbach.

“Under Favre, Reus has been used more often in central areas, which suits him much better. He is no longer tied to the touchline and has been given far more freedom.”

Wild then looked back at Reus’s struggles over the previous few seasons, arguing that without the constant recurrence of injuries, Dortmund’s captain should already have established himself among the very best players in world football.

Now, with his body finally no longer holding him back and a tactical system that suited him perfectly, Reus was enjoying another spring in his career.

Wild wrote:

“The Reus we are seeing now is Reus at his very best.”

At the end of the article, Wild shifted his focus away from Der Klassiker and toward the Bundesliga as a whole.

“It is not only Dortmund’s youth movement. Across the Bundesliga this season, teams are playing more positively than they have in the past.

“Clubs such as Mönchengladbach and Bremen are playing attractive football. Even newly promoted Nuremberg refuse to park the bus. More and more teams across the league are playing at a quick tempo with an open, refreshing style.

“The clearest evidence is in the numbers. So far this season, the Bundesliga is the only one of Europe’s top five leagues averaging more than three goals per match.”

“The Bundesliga is becoming the goal factory everyone remembers so fondly.”