The midfielder has not played in the Bundesliga yet this season, and his coach admits he is struggling to find a place for him despite his diversity <\/p>\n
Lucien Favre has made it clear Mario Gotze faces a fight for first-team football at Borussia Dortmund this season.<\/p>\n
The Germany international was taken off after 64 minutes of the 2-1 DFB-Pokal win at Greuther Furth last month and then failed to get off the bench in his side’s opening two Bundesliga games of the season.<\/p>\n
Favre used a 4-3-3 system in those matches, a 0-0 draw at Hannover and a 4-1 win over RB Leipzig, with Mahmoud Dahoud, Axel Witsel and Thomas Delaney preferred in midfield.<\/p>\n
Article continues below<\/span> <\/p>\n Juve on alert: Exiled Icardi may have already played his final game for Inter Sarri vindicated for dropping Kepa as Chelsea & Pedro impress in Spurs win Magnificent Mane takes centre stage as league leaders Liverpool put on a five-star show Lukaku sends reminder that his Man Utd career is far from over <\/p>\n And the Dortmund head coach admits it is difficult to fit Gotze into his side given his other options for the central roles.<\/p>\n “I think it depends on our system,” he told a news conference. “I said that it would take time for us to find our best team and our best system. There are a lot of tactical decisions to be made.<\/p>\n “We have to tell the truth. Mario can play in a central position. He can play in our 4-3-3 system. You have to play athletically and with a lot of dedication.<\/p>\n “Against Leipzig and Hannover, we played with three players in central midfield. Mario can play in one of those positions, but we have many players that can play there.<\/p>\n “We have eight or nine players there, and we have [Shinji] Kagawa and Marco Reus and Mario. There are many players. It’s a fact.”<\/p>\n Gotze has struggled for regular first-team football since his return to Dortmund from Bayern in 2016, with fitness problems partly behind him making only 28 league starts in the last two seasons.<\/p>\n Dortmund host Eintracht Frankfurt in their next Bundesliga match on Friday.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The midfielder has not played in the Bundesliga yet this season, and his coach admits he is struggling to find a place for him despite his diversity Lucien Favre has made it clear Mario Gotze faces a fight for first-team football at Borussia Dortmund this season. The Germany international was taken off after 64 minutes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Editors' Picks<\/h3>\n