Marco Reus is Europe's unluckiest footballer - Borussia Dortmund legend deserves a fairy-tale ending in Champions League final

When it comes to Reus, there is an understandable temptation to focus on the negatives. His name has become synonymous with misfortune. For some, he is the great unfulfilled talent, a fantastic footballer cruelly prevented from realising his full potential by one savage setback after another.

Certainly, a decade ago, there were few more exciting attacking midfielders in world football. During Dortmund's run to the Champions League final, where he won a penalty in the 2-1 loss to Bayern Munich, he was directly involved in eight goals, netting 19 times in total in all competitions. He proved even more prolific the following season, scoring 23 goals in 44 games, as well as providing more assists than any other player in the Bundesliga. Put quite simply, there was no better player in Germany at the time.

"I think very, very highly of him," the legendary Franz Beckenbauer said in early 2014. "He's going to be the game's next superstar, that's my opinion. It's really fun to watch him play football."

The 2014 World Cup should have been the defining tournament of Reus' career. He was 24 and playing at the peak of his powers for one of the strongest sides in the international game.

However, while his great friend and former Dortmund team-mate Mario Gotze ended up scoring the winning goal in the final in Rio, Reus didn't make a single World Cup appearance, having been struck down by an ankle injury in his Germany's final warm-up game, against Armenia.

A devastated Reus stated, "A dream was shattered from one moment to the next." And not for the last time either.

Just two years after the bitter disappointment of missing out on Brazil 2014, Reus was left out of Germany's Euro 2016 squad after failing to recover in time from a groin injury. Coach Joachim Low lamented, "Marco has serious fitness problems."

It's always felt like the abiding theme of Reus' career, with the attacker once famously admitting that he would "give up all my money to be healthy enough to do my job."

Reus did make it to Russia for the 2018 World Cup, and even scored in the group win over Sweden, but he made the decision to pull out of Euro 2020 himself.

"After a complicated, exhausting and, in the end, 'thank God' successful season, I decided, together with (Low), not to go to the European Championship," he wrote on Instagram. "This decision was very difficult for me because I am always full of pride when I am allowed to appear for my country. But after a very intense year for me personally and achieving my goals at BVB, I made the decision to give my body time to recover!"

Unfortunately, even such a sensible approach to looking after himself failed to solve his fitness problems, as Reus went on to be ruled out of the 2022 World Cup with another ankle injury.

When one also considers that Reus has only two DFB-Pokal winners' medals to show for his career, it's undeniably difficult not to feel as if he maybe he would have been better served by joining another top club when he had the chance, just like so many of his former team-mates, such as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham.

Reus doesn't see it that way, though. In his eyes, the shame isn't that he stayed, but that so many other great players left.

"I've always said that everyone is responsible for their own career. Time flies and you only have so much of it," he pointed out. "We've had a lot of players here who we could have built a fantastic team with, but they unfortunately made different choices and pursued other career paths. That should be respected.

"For a player like me, who always wants to compete for titles, it obviously stings to see the best players leave the club because they regrettably don't see that they would be able to make the next big step here. But I never had the sense that I should go down this route just because others did. I was always ready to build up something new again and thereby send a message to people: 'I'm staying here no matter what!"

All good things come to an end, though, and Reus will leave Dortmund this summer. In an ideal world, he'd have finished his career at the club he's supported since he was a boy but, truth be told, it probably didn't make sense for either party at this stage.

His role under Edin Terzic has slowly but surely decreased over the past 18 months. Reus started the final eight games of last season's title tilt on the bench before losing the captain's armband to Emre Can over the summer. This term, he's only started one game during the knockout stages of the Champions League - and that was all the way back in February, in the last 16.

There were times when his frustration showed. All he's ever wanted to do is play, after all. But he publicly reprimanded himself for getting annoyed, dealt with his disappointment and moved on, just as he's always done.

When Dortmund defeated PSG to reach the Champions League final, nobody was happier than Reus. He'd only come on as a second-half substitute at Parc des Princes, but he celebrated wildly with his fellow fans afterwards.

He also started Dortmund's final three Bundesliga games and received the "perfect" send-off at Signal Iduna Park, by both scoring and assisting in his final game in front of the Yellow Wall - after getting the beers in for everyone in the ground.

Such a gesture was typical of a man who is renowned for his charity work and even donated €500,000 (£425,000/$525,000) to help sustain small, Dortmund-based businesses to deal with the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

"He's an amazing guy, a living legend," team-mate Julian Brandt enthused, "He'll always be one of the players I've looked up to in my career."

Terzic, meanwhile, echoed Jurgen Klopp's claim that it's not important what people think when you arrive, but when you depart, when he pointed out that "the currency that lasts forever is: how do you leave? Well, Marco leaves an incomparable story behind."

It's not over yet, of course. In the story of a life-long love affair with Dortmund, there's one small - but hugely significant - chapter still to be written. Saturday's Champions League final is Reus' shot at a fairy-tale finish - not that he wants the focus to be on him. He clearly would have loved to have stayed with Dortmund for one more season, but he's already enormously grateful for the way in which he got to say goodbye to the Yellow Wall.

"I am completely aware of the decisions that have been made, that it had to be this way," he said. "That means we can prepare well for this next big final and hopefully finish in perfect fashion."

Win or lose at Wembley, though, Reus will clearly leave Dortmund with no regrets. "There was no reason to do things differently or not to be loyal to the club," he said. "It was worth making all the sacrifices. Pulling through, sticking at it, never giving up and always staying positive."

And that perhaps is his legacy: the example he set for others. Most careers don't go as expected. Only a lucky few win World Cups and Ballons d'Or. For the majority, the game is a constant struggle.

So, while Reus may not have achieved what was expected of him after his first appearance for Dortmund in a Champions League final at Wembley; the fact that he's back again 11 years on tells you everything you need to know not only about the man’s natural talent - but also his mental strength.

As Matthias Sammer once said, "If you take [Lionel] Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, who have hardly had any injuries and have been playing football at an almost God-given level for decades, it's marvellous, and I have a lot of respect for them. But I believe that the situations Marco has been through are a school for life. In that sense, he is a role model for many people. Not giving up, always going on, surviving difficult times, continuing to live with great stability and always showing high motivation for the job - that's Marco Reus."

And that's also precisely why his Dortmund career won't only be defined by the setbacks he suffered - but the setbacks he overcame.