MANCHESTER City, Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal will all have to re-think their summer recruitment plans after Marco Reus confirmed that he has signed a new contract with relegation-threatened Borussia Dortmund until 2019.
Reus’ new deal is understood to be worth £6million a year plus £1.5 million a year in image rights – equating to around £145,000 a week.
It is an extraordinary step of faith by Reus to commit to Dortmund, who are 16th in Bundlesliga, in danger of relegation and with no prospect of qualifying for the Champions League next season, except in the highly unlikely event that they were to win the trophy this season.
Even if there are release clauses included in the deal in the event of relegation and if he wants to leave before 2019, it still represents a remarkable piece of negotiation by Dortmund managing director Michael Zorc, given that Reus had £20million release clause in his former contract which could be activated this summer.
That meant the 25-year-old Dortmund-born midfielder, widely considered one of the best in the world, would have been available for a bargain fee, with Dortmund missing out on cashing in on one of their biggest assets.
Now they can expect to received at least £50million for Reus – and the prospect of at least another season from him, assuming they stay up.
Despite a clamour of interest from the leading English clubs, with United and City leading the chase, Reus’ next move has always more likely been to Spain, with Real Madrid having been the club expected to sign him this summer.
Reus, however, is understood to have been keener on a move to Barcelona but that prospect was scuppered by FIFA’s tranfer ban on the Catalan club, meaning they cannot sign new players until 2016 for breaching rules in recruiting young overseas players.
Signing a new deal at Dortmund means that he is immediately elevated into the relams of one of the elite world footballers in terms of wages and can now wait 18 months to join Barcelona, where his friend Marc-Andre ter Stegen is the reserve-team goalkepeer.
Whatever the plans for the future, for now Dortmund are celebrating their coup in presuading Reus, who was a Dortmund fan as a boy, to say for now.
‘Marco can become an iconic player at Dortmund, like Uwe Sweeler was at Hamburg or Steven Gerrard at Liverpool,’ said Hans-Joachim Watzke, chief executive at Dortmund.
‘The fact that he is has chose to lengthen his deal here at a time of crisis on the pitch shows how strongly he identifies with the club is and we’re very proud of that.’
Zorc said: ‘Marco could have chosen any top club in the world. The fact that he has taken this decision shown that is heart is with his home town and his home club.’
For Dortmund, who lost centre forward Robert Lewandowski to Bayern Munich last summer on a free transfer after they failed to lengthen his deal and also lost Mario Goetze to Bayern, who activated his £30million buy-out clause in 2013, the Reus deal represents the highlight thus far or a dreadful season on the pitch.
