In the middle of a Borussia Monchengladbach team who can’t decide what they want to be, 21-year-old midfielder Rocco Reitz is providing some definition.
Reitz is an academy graduate who has been at the club since the age of seven. He comes from a family of Gladbach supporters, was once a season-ticket holder and is still among their 100,000 members. And on Friday he scored twice against visitors Werder Bremen to continue a burst of form which earned him his first two Germany Under-21 caps last month and positioned him among the country’s most promising box-to-box players.
Reitz is miscast by his appearance. He’s 5ft 8in (174cm) with the raffishness of a late 1990s South American playmaker but is actually a bustling and busy type, more dependable and blue-collared than expected.
On the spectrum of great Gladbach midfielders of the past, he is closer to the energy and force of Lothar Matthaus than the flamboyant craft of Gunter Netzer. Talented? Absolutely. But by no means a pure artisan.
Without the ball, Reitz is an outright nuisance. He is persistent, waspish, and willing to throw himself into tackles. With possession, he is stylish and technical. He seems to want the ball — always — and rarely gets flustered by pressure. But there’s a wholeheartedness to his play as well and, in concert, those qualities make a player full of personality. One easy to admire and fun to watch but — most importantly — one with the knack of changing the score, too.
Reitz has four Bundesliga goals this season and scored two more, in just 26 minutes as a substitute, on his under-21s debut against Estonia, and they have all come in his past seven games.
The most recent of the bunch, his second shortly after half-time in a 2-2 draw with Bremen, expressed many of the qualities behind the rise.
His first in the match, Gladbach’s equaliser at the end of the first half, was a smart finish after finding space in the box, but his second came at the end of a 60-yard run in support of Robin Hack’s breakaway. His clever feint and finish to score was one impressive aspect. That Reitz saw the developing chance before anyone else and knew how to capitalise on it was another.
The sequence characterised Reitz’s playing style, depicting him as one of those young players who — before they become refined and tactically wise — try to change matches through instinct and force of will.
He is German and scoring goals from central midfield, so the Michael Ballack comparison is never far away, but his aesthetic is really more Lampardian: he does not look like an athlete, but he makes runs others are unwilling to match and invariably finds space which should not really be there.
There is certainly an opportunistic element to his game.
His first goal for Gladbach came at home against Wolfsburg on November 10, when he pressed goalkeeper Koen Casteels’ pass out from the back, intercepted and then sidefooted home. Against Borussia Dortmund a week later, Reitz was rewarded for another long run from midfield, drifting beyond the home defence and taking Alassane Plea’s pass in his stride, before scoring at the foot of the Westfalenstadion’s Yellow Wall. He works hard to get into those positions, yes, but he has plenty of class to call upon when he arrives.
Admittedly, these have been snippets rather than overwhelming themes. Reitz still drops in and out of games and has the occasional naivety of someone who has made 13 Bundesliga starts and turned 21 in late May. For now, it makes him a person of interest rather than a shooting star.
While the situation around Julian Nagelsmann’s Germany squad remains fluid ahead of next summer’s European Championship on home turf, it would take something dramatic for Reitz to barge his way into it, particularly ahead of Robert Andrich (Bayer Leverkusen), Pascal Gross (Brighton) or Felix Nmecha (Dortmund), or even Stuttgart’s Angelo Stiller, all of whom currently have stronger claims.
Gladbach’s form is unlikely to carry him, either.
Gerardo Seoane’s team are mid-table in every sense. They have the ninth-most shots on target in the 18-club Bundesliga, the seventh-highest expected goals (xG) rating, equal fifth-most goals and are in 11th place, playing a style that is neither overly patient nor notably direct.
And yet one of the compelling aspects of Reitz’s season is how unexpected his emergence has been.
He actually made his Bundesliga debut in October 2020. But with a queue for game time at his position and few opportunities at first-team level, he departed the following summer to spend a season on loan at Sint-Truidense in Belgium’s top division. Six months after coming back, again in search of more minutes, he returned there on a second loan in last season’s January window.
Sint-Truidense are not a Belgian power. They are better known as a landing spot for promising Japanese players moving to Europe. Reitz was a regular starter and among the club’s better players, certainly during that second spell, but — in a league full of more powerful teams and dozens of high-potential players — there was little to suggest that, approaching three years after his first senior appearance for Gladbach, he was about to become so important so quickly.
After all, Gladbach began the season with a midfield featuring experienced former Germany international Julian Weigl, the gifted Manu Kone, and the mislaid promise of Florian Neuhaus. Yet, with one game to go until the Bundesliga’s winter break, their joint-second-highest scorer is a 21-year-old who spent 18 months over the past two seasons on loan in Belgium, playing on Sint-Truidense’s artificial pitch.
That would make this enough of a story, but Reitz is not just another midfielder at Gladbach.
He was born in Duisburg, a 40-minute drive to the north east, and is very much a product of the Ruhr Valley. Naturally, that backstory is on heavy rotation in the German media and, at times, Reitz cannot touch the ball without it being mentioned in the commentary. But that hardly makes his rise any less affecting, nor does it dampen the one-of-their-own spectacle that is always special, wherever it occurs.
At times this season, in a dynamic accented by his boyish features, seeing him play and celebrate his goals has been like watching a child’s daydream come to life.
In September, the club announced a contract extension for him that will run until 2026. In the accompanying video on YouTube, Reitz stood high in the Borussia Park stands, recalling moments spent in them as a boy. Where he sat. With whom. What they saw. He talked of being drenched under showers of beer and of stoppage-time wins and goals that could have happened yesterday. He has a fan’s fondness for details, rather than a footballer’s disinterested cool, and that is a seductive quality that never loses its power.
“I’ve spent more than half my life at Borussia and the club has been my second home for a long time,” Reitz said when the club announced his contract.
“It makes me proud that I can live my dreams here.”
Elsewhere in Europe
Le Havre shock Nice in Ligue 1, scoring three times against a defence which had only conceded six all season.
Bayer Leverkusen will spend the winter break top of the Bundesliga.
Celtic lose consecutive Scottish top-flight games for the first time since 2013.
Barcelona are held away against Valencia, losing La Liga ground to Real Madrid… and potentially Girona, who face Alaves tonight (Monday).
(Photo: Federico Gambarini/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
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