- 19 hours ago
Dortmund reveal why Reinier isn’t playing
Martin Macdonald
- Updated: 17 May 2021 22:27 BST
- 2 min read
Borussia Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc says on-loan Real Madrid attacking midfielder Reinier hasn’t featured much this season as he currently lacks the required “physique”.
In January of 2020, Real Madrid announced the €30m signing of the Brazilian from Flamengo, with him joining compatriots Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo in a Brazilian contingent viewed as the future of the club.
Madrid were keen for him to go out on loan in the 2020/21 campaign rather than remain with their Castilla side. He would not have been able to play for the senior squad as Vinicius, Rodrygo, and Eder Militao take up the three allocated non-eu registration slots.
Having witnessed Achraf Hakimi come on leaps and bounds over a two-year loan at Dortmund over the past couple of years, Madrid struck a similar deal with the German side for Reinier, who has moved to Germany for the next two seasons.
However, the 18-year-old is yet to start a match for BVB in the 2020/21 season, and has been limited to just 105 minutes of football off the bench.
The reason for this, according to Zorc, is that Reinier has had so little football over the past 10 months, and so lacks the fitness to feature all the time.
“He still lacks the physical aspect, ” Zorc told the Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper.
“You can tell that he spent months without being able to train or play in Spain.”
Zorc went on to say that “It makes sense” for Reinier to take advantage of his time away with the Brazil U23 squad, who face Egypt this week.
Although Real Madrid are not unhappy yet about the amount of minutes Reinier is receiving, they will reportedly keep an eye on his development and recall him should he not be getting their preferred minutes to develop.
