Tag: Marco Reus

LA Galaxy confirm signing of ex-Dortmund star Marco Reus

The 35-year-old is a formidable addition to the Galaxy’s already-strong attack

The LA Galaxy have made a major addition ahead of the MLS playoff push, signing former Borussia Dortmund midfielder Marco Reus.

Reus, 35, joins the Galaxy as a free agent and has signed a two-and-a-half-year contract through the end of the 2026 MLS season, with the club using targeted allocation money to complete the deal.

“Marco Reus is a world-class player who has excelled at the highest level of the sport, including playing in two Champions League finals for Borussia Dortmund and in the FIFA World Cup with the German national team,” said LA Galaxy general manager Will Kuntz.

“For Marco, a two-time Bundesliga Footballer of the Year, to join the Galaxy after playing his entire career in Germany is a testament to the project we are continuing to build at the club. We look forward to Marco’s contributions to the LA Galaxy as we enter the critical final stretch of the 2024 MLS season and beyond.”

Led by dynamic attackers like Joseph Paintsil, Riqui Puig, Gabriel Pec and Dejan Joveljić, the Galaxy have surged to the top of the Western Conference standings. Should head coach Greg Vanney find a way to successfully integrate Reus, it would make the team’s attack even more formidable.

Reus is one of the best German players of his generation and a legend at Dortmund, where he tallied 301 goal contributions in 429 career appearances across all competitions in 12 seasons.

The midfielder departed the club at the end of the 2023-24 season when his contract expired.

At the international level, Reus has 15 goals and 14 assists in 48 career appearances for the Germany national team.

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WATCH: Dortmund legend Reus scores sensational free kick in farewell match

What better way for a club legend to say farewell

Marco Reus could not have written the script any better.

Playing his final home match for Borussia Dortmund, the club legend scored a sensational first-half free kick in a 4-0 win over Darmstadt on Saturday.

Reus recently confirmed he won’t sign a new deal when his contract expires in June, ending a 12-year run with Dortmund.

The 34-year-old has said he will continue his playing career, and has been linked with a move to MLS.

On Saturday, fans at Signal Iduna Park got to say farewell to one of their club’s greatest ever players, and Reus signed off with a trademark stunner.

Reus has one final game as a Dortmund player: the Champions League final on June 1 against Real Madrid.

Watch Reus sign off with free-kick goal

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Marco Reus reportedly in talks over MLS move after Dortmund contract ends

Reus could be looking to come to the U.S. once he ends his 12-year stay at Dortmund this summer

Marco Reus could well be considering a move to MLS once he wraps a superb career at Borussia Dortmund.

Former France midfielder Samir Nasri, now working as a pundit on French broadcaster Canal+, said that the 34-year-old is ready to continue his career with an unspecified MLS club once his der Schwarzgelben contract expires at the end of the season.

Dortmund has already confirmed it will not renew Reus’ contract, and the playmaker says he intends to carry on playing.

“I talked to Marco Reus,” asserted Nasri. “He said he loves football too much to quit right now and will go to MLS next season.”

Former Chile striker Ivan Zamorano, now working as an analyst for TUDN, spiced the rumors up further on Tuesday when he narrowed Reus’ possible destinations to a club in Los Angeles.

LA clubs, St. Louis linked with Reus

That would place Los Angeles FC and the LA Galaxy high up on the list of potential landing spots, though LAFC is probably the more likely of the two sides to have room for Reus.

The Galaxy spent nearly $20 million on wingers Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec, and have built around playmaker Riqui Puig. With Greg Vanney’s side playing well, there are salary cap and on-field reasons that reduce the chances of Reus playing for the MLS originals.

LAFC’s ability to bring Reus in may be limited as well, with the club strongly linked to a move for France striker Olivier Giroud.

On Wednesday, The Athletic’s Tom Bogert reported that St. Louis City SC has held “preliminary talks” with Reus’ camp. Roman Bürki, St. Louis’ starting goalkeeper, played alongside Reus at Dortmund from 2015-22.

However, Bogert would add that St. Louis has not yet placed Reus on its discovery list (an MLS process that essentially boxes out any other club in the league from signing a player), and that clubs in Turkey and Saudi Arabia have also expressed interest.

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Pulisic pays tribute to Reus after Dortmund legend announces departure

The pair played together for three and a half seasons with the Bundesliga club

Christian Pulisic paid tribute to his former teammate Marco Reus on Friday, following an announcement that Reus would be leaving Borussia Dortmund at the end of the season.

Reus confirmed he won’t sign a new deal when his contract expires in June, ending a 12-year run with Dortmund.

The 34-year-old will leave as one of Dortmund’s all-time greats, saying he will seek out a new club rather than retire.

“I’m incredibly grateful for and proud of this special time at my club Borussia Dortmund,” Reus said in a club statement.

“I already know now that I will find it difficult to say goodbye at the end of the season. And yet I’m happy that there is now clarity and that we can focus fully on the very important final games that we still have to play.”

Reus will hope to sign off with a Champions League title, with Dortmund carrying a 1-0 lead over PSG into next week’s semifinal second leg in Paris.

Pulisic began his pro career with Dortmund as a 17-year-old during the 2015-16 season, and would go on to spend three more seasons with the German club before joining Chelsea in 2019.

In a post on his Instagram account, the AC Milan star shared the farewell video from Reus and wrote: “What a guy, what a player.”

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Wonderteen Youssoufa Moukoko is in Germany’s World Cup squad, but Marco Reus isn’t

Moukoko has been on a tear with Dortmund, but his teammate Reus misses yet another big tournament

There were plenty of headlines as Germany released its 26-man World Cup squad on Thursday, some of them good (Mario Götze! Youssoufa Moukoko!) and others not-so-good (Marco Reus nooooooo).

Let’s start with the positive. Moukoko has been on an absolute tear with Borussia Dortmund and the 17-year-old’s first senior Germany call is for the World Cup. Talk about timing.

There was also a storybook return for 2014 hero Götze, who is somehow still only 30 and has started the season well with Eintracht Frankfurt.

Götze has not been called up since 2017, but he’s set to partake in his second World Cup.

“I can only say that Mario is totally happy to be there, and we are looking forward to seeing him,” Germany coach Hansi Flick said at a press conference.

“We all know that Mario is a brilliant footballer, who has flashes of brilliance. You can see it in every game: he is top fit, he can play 90 minutes even three times a week.”

For Reus though, the news was not so great.

The Dortmund star has not recovered in time from an ankle injury, continuing a horrendous run of luck that has now seen him miss out on four major tournaments through injuries.

“He tried everything to catch this train. It hurts us because we could have used his quality,” Flick said.

Germany’s World Cup squad

Goalkeepers: Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich), Marc-Andre ter Stegen (Barcelona), Kevin Trapp (Eintracht Frankfurt)

Defenders: Matthias Ginter (Freiburg), Antonio Rudiger (Real Madrid), Niklas Sule (Borussia Dortmund), Nico Schlotterbeck (Borussia Dortmund), Thilo Kehrer (West Ham United), David Raum (RB Leipzig), Lukas Klostermann (RB Leipzig), Armel Bella-Kotchap (Southampton), Christian Gunter (Freiburg)

Midfielders: Ilkay Gundogan (Manchester City), Jonas Hofmann (Borussia Monchengladbach), Leon Goretzka, Serge Gnabry, Leroy Sane, Jamal Musiala, Joshua Kimmich, Thomas Muller (all Bayern Munich), Julian Brandt (Borussia Dortmund), Mario Gotze (Eintracht Frankfurt)

Strikers: Kai Havertz (Chelsea), Youssoufa Moukoko (Borussia Dortmund), Niklas Fullkrug (Werder Bremen), Karim Adeyemi (Borussia Dortmund)

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Marco Reus can’t help but wonder what could have been at Borussia Dortmund

The 33-year-old has seen a slew of world-class young talent leave during his time at the club

Borussia Dortmund is a club in a weird state of purgatory.

On one hand, Dortmund is a huge club with a gigantic stadium and a passionate fan base, big enough to win trophies and attract some of Europe’s brightest talents.

But over the past decade, Dortmund has struggled to convince its top young players that their fortunes would be best served by staying. When Europe’s giants come calling, Dortmund’s brightest stars almost always leave.

The list is long: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, İlkay Gündoğan, Jadon Sancho, Ousmane Dembélé, Christian Pulisic and Erling Haaland are just a few of the high-profile players Dortmund has lost in recent seasons.

And so Dortmund has become something of an almost club: winning the occasional trophy while continuously falling just short in the Champions League and the Bundesliga, where Bayern Munich has now won 10 straight titles.

One top young player who did not leave, despite chances to do so, was Marco Reus, who has been one of the club’s top players since joining in 2012.

Now 33, Reus admitted he couldn’t help but lament some of his club’s major departures since he first arrived at Signal Iduna Park.

“It’s always a shame to see that we sign incredibly good young players who then unfortunately have the dream of developing somewhere else after two or three years,” the Dortmund captain told the OMR podcast.

“If we had been able to keep the players we had, we would have made quite a splash in Europe.”

Indeed.

The focus will now turn toward the future of Jude Bellingham, who has already become one of the top midfielders in Europe at age 19. Amid talk of a nine-figure transfer fee, the England international has been tipped to leave Dortmund in the next year or two.

Bellingham could buck the trend but it seems much more likely that he’ll join a long list of top talent who decided their future lies away from Dortmund.

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