Marco Reus reacts irritably to the reporter’s question – the reasons for this lie deeper

Cup out against FC St. Pauli
Reus reacts irritably to the reporter’s question – the reasons for this lie deeper

BVB captain Marco Reus had to grapple with the cup defeat against FC St. Pauli

© screenshot ARD

Marco Reus reacted smugly to a question from the ARD reporter after Borussia Dortmund’s cup. This was not only due to the inappropriate question, but also to a fundamental grievance at BVB.

Marco Reus was understandably pissed off. After the 2-1 defeat at FC St. Pauli in the round of 16 of the DFB Cup, a pale and sweaty BVB captain stood in front of the advertising wall and had to answer questions from ARD reporter Valeska Homburg. And she was quite insensitive: “Now you’re no longer in the cup, Bayern are a bit hasty in the league, out in the Champions League – yeah… that’s not so great at first, is it?” asked the ARD woman. Reus reacted smugly: “Where are Bayern now? Five points, right? Should we give up now, or what? We have to let that sink in first. We missed a huge opportunity to win the cup again. That’s very bitter right now,” he said, clearly annoyed. He even overlooked the fact that Bayern are currently six points ahead of BVB in the Bundesliga table.

Now it is one thing whether you ask a football professional such a question in this way after such a hearty defeat in this arrogant tone of voice, another is the reaction: The fact that Reus was so rude was also because Homburg Finger in the BVB wound that the club has not been able to heal for years: the eternal fluctuations in performance that keep preventing Dortmund from catching up with their competitor FC Bayern.

The season is going worse than usual for BVB

Correct: Dortmund is far behind expectations in the current season. Being out of the Champions League after the group stage was a serious setback. Now followed the failure in the DFB Cup as the defending champion. A huge opportunity to win the title again was missed, especially since Bayern are already out. In the Bundesliga, Dortmund are only chasing Bayern. What Reus was right about: Bayern are not in a hurry with six points at this point in the season, but they dominate and have survived every small phase of weakness so far, because Dortmund also weakens regularly.

Coach Marco Rose knows about the fact. He was annoyed, among other things, that BVB had now served “every cliché” again, and admitted in the ARD interview that he wanted a certain consistency in performance. BVB just can’t start “a series of seven, eight, nine games”.

The team regularly shows “many faces”, as ARD expert Schweinsteiger put it. Impressive performances like last time against SC Freiburg and Eintracht Frankfurt are followed by crashes like the current one against St. Pauli. In the Champions League there were embarrassing performances against Ajax Amsterdam and Sporting Lisbon this season. BVB has been producing its own cliché for years. In the 2018/19 season, they were the superior autumn champions after the first half of the season, only to collapse mercilessly in the second half of the season.

Bastian Schweinsteiger: no guys like Thomas Müller

Is it because BVB has “no guys like Thomas Müller” in the team, as Schweinsteiger put it? Guys who open their mouths, lead a team and carry them along – that’s a frequently asked diagnosis. Or is it because Dortmund regularly sells its best (very profitably) for whom BVB is a stopover on the way to one of the big European clubs? Or that, as managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke regularly emphasizes, they don’t pay the same salaries as Real Madrid or Bayern?

The end against St. Pauli definitely showed: BVB suffers from itself. In the best moments, they play exhilarating attacking football, only to then destroy a lot of what they have built up before with uninspired performances. Reus knows that like no other. That’s why he was so snotty.

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