Rocco Reitz has always been a Borussia Monchengladbach supporter — well, for all but the first two hours of his life.
“After I was born, my dad’s best friend came to the hospital with a membership card. My dad was always the biggest fan, but it’s that whole side of his family.”
Reitz, 21, was born in Duisburg, 20 miles from Gladbach. He never had much choice over where his loyalties would lie. Today, he is living his childhood dream: playing in midfield for the team he used to watch from the stands.
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It is just after training, in a room off the players’ tunnel at Borussia-Park. It has been a difficult few days. Gladbach suffered an ugly 3-0 home defeat to Freiburg the weekend before, the latest in a run of bad results that stretched through a long, hard winter.
Reitz has been hearing opinions about the team’s form from every direction.
“My dad and his friends have always had season tickets. I had to call one the other day to talk about my parents’ anniversary and for the first few minutes, I just had to do this,” he says, mimicking holding the phone away from his ear, “while he talked about that Freiburg game.
“It’s funny. They’re angry, but in a loving way.”
Reitz laughs as he tells these stories. These people are proud of him — none more so than his father, who comes to games wearing his son’s first match-worn shirt.
“My dad gets so excited for every game and he’s always asking me questions. In the beginning, he was exactly like a fan. ‘Who’s playing? Are you playing? What did the coach say after the game?’.
“He stopped doing that really quickly, but he’s still unhappy when we lose. It’s not quite like I’m not his son anymore, but he still hates it when we lose and tells me if I haven’t had a good game.”
Reitz, now two days away from facing Borussia Dortmund in the Borussenderby, is still at a stage of his career when everything is yet to become completely normal.
“Today, when we finished training, we signed shirts and there must have been five with my name on. It’s still difficult to believe. Two years ago, nobody knew my name. When I walked past, I was just some second team player who they ignored.
“Now, it’s crazy — but so nice. Sometimes my dad sends me pictures of people he sees around the town with my shirt on.”
This is his first full year. Reitz has been at Gladbach since he was seven, joining the club after standing out at one of their Easter football camps. But he might not have made it. In his late teens, his body began to grow too quickly, resulting in muscular injuries which threatened to derail his career. He overcame those growing pains, making his first-team debut in October 2020, when he was 18 but he had to wait for his full-time breakthrough. Lars Stindl, an ageing icon, was still at the club. Florian Neuhaus’ reputation was soaring. The gifted Manu Kone had just begun to attract attention.
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Midfield places were at a premium. Instead, Reitz spent two years on loan with Sint-Truiden in Belgium’s Pro League, returning last summer. This season, he’s established himself back at Gladbach.
His story helps and hinders him. Barely a phase of Gladbach possession passes without a commentator mentioning that Reitz has been a club member since birth but he is an extremely talented player, too. He won his first cap for Germany Under-21s in November 2023 and scored his first Bundesliga goal that same month against Wolfsburg.
Reitz is a midfielder without a label. He can pass with flair and carry the ball with skill. He can cover the yards between the penalty boxes and finish when he arrives. Reitz has six goals in just 1,709 Bundesliga minutes (a rate of 0.32 goals per 90 minutes) this season and has announced himself as a wholehearted, spiky player, who can fight in the margins.
He is a composite of his influences. Reitz is a long-time admirer of Bayern Munich’s Joshua Kimmich — the player and the professional: “He can’t lose. He’s always trying to improve and that’s something to look up to”.
And because he grew up as a Gladbach fan, former players Granit Xhaka and Raffael made an impression on him, too. Newer stars, such as Bayer Leverkusen’s Exequiel Palacios, are cited, as well as those who belong to an era before his time, including Gennaro Gattuso, the former AC Milan firebrand.
Like Kimmich, Reitz has a drive for improvement. When he first started playing regularly, Reitz would lie awake until 4am or 5am, staring at the ceiling while the adrenaline drained away. It is better now, he says, but in those small hours, he still focuses on his flaws. When analysts send him clips, he asks only for the mistakes. It leaves him clear-eyed about his weaknesses.
“My heading needs to be better. Not more powerful, but there are always a lot of duels in midfield and I need to be able to win the ball for my team-mates. I need to be calmer sometimes. Instead of always trying to play forward, sometimes my passes need to go outside, or back deep and safe. I need to look around more, as well, to see more of the pitch — sometimes I have to know it’s OK to put my foot on the ball and keep it.”
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But what kind of midfielder does he want to become?
“I just want to play. I don’t care whether it’s as a No 6 or a No 10, or as part of a ‘double 8’ (two players ahead of a defensive midfielder) or a ‘single 8’ (one player ahead of two holding midfielders). It doesn’t matter to me — but when I can choose a position, I would love to play box-to-box. (I love) getting into the area, scoring goals, using, and stealing the ball. That’s me, that’s my best position — being a little bit free.”
Away from the pitch, freedom is on the wane. Gladbach have almost 100,000 members and Borussia-Park’s average attendance is more than 52,000 per game. In a town with a population of just 250,000, that has made Reitz, who lives locally, extremely recognisable.
“There’s more attention. I don’t go out immediately after games. People look, but nobody interrupts me. When me and my girlfriend are together, nobody disturbs us and everyone is really respectful. They know I’ve spent all my life here and that I love the club. They might say, ‘Hello’, or, ‘Good luck’, or, ‘Good game at the weekend’.
“But I always wanted this. It’s part of the package.”
Borussia Monchengladbach’s history is part of that deal, too, as is the habit of measuring the present against the past. The club have won the German title five times. Any walk around Borussia-Park is a reminder of exactly how grand a club they are. Portraits of Gunter Netzer, Stefan Effenberg, Allan Simonsen, Jupp Heynckes and Lothar Matthaus hang from the exterior.
Gladbach is a club of greats, but they won all of those five Bundesliga titles during the same decade. In the 1970s, in the wake of the West German Student Movements, and within a looser, more liberal society, a young Gladbach became the neutral’s favourite in Germany. They were a fashionable, freewheeling alternative to the Beckenbauer-Maier-Muller Bayern Munich teams of the era.
Success has been elusive since but only four clubs in the Bundesliga have more members than Gladbach and they still have a weighty gravity that, slowly, Reitz is beginning to feel.
“At the start, it was easier. I was just playing and there was no pressure on me. Now that I’ve signed a new contract, the supporters’ expectations have gone up. Sometimes, that’s in my head.
“The last few weeks, when I’ve been on the bench or not performing well, it’s not been easy. We’re not winning, either, and that’s when the little voices at coming. You have to play better. You have to score.
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“‘Where’s the old Rocco?’.”
The old Rocco is never too far away. Days after speaking, he scores the clinching goal in a 3-1 win over Wolfsburg. The victory curbed fears of relegation, but his impassioned celebration in front of the travelling fans betrayed the tension he describes and what his club means to him.
Immer noch Gänsehaut 💚#DieFohlen #WOBBMG pic.twitter.com/pujeYrddIx
— Borussia (@borussia) April 9, 2024
The Wolfsburg goal was probably his most important. The one he scored against them in November 2023, his first for Gladbach, was more precious. Reitz seized on a mistake in the Wolfsburg defence, drove into the box and stylishly scored. Given that Reitz had spent his entire life waiting for that moment, he looked remarkably calm.
Inside, his heart was pounding.
“When something like that happens, it’s all so fast.
“But there had been much time spent away from family and my friends just to get to that moment. Then, when the ball fell to me on the edge of the box, I just had to put it in… I thought, ‘Please – please, please, please – this just has to go in somehow.’
“Today, when I see that goal and how the stadium reacted it gives me goosebumps. I can remember walking back to the halfway line afterwards. My dad was too far away, but I could see the faces of all the fans.”
“I just couldn’t believe it.”
(Top photo: Christian Verheyen/Borussia Moenchengladbach via Getty Images)