“We have won many new fans but the club must stay true to itself”
The Germany forward, still chuckling with delight, picks up the story and explains how the Gabonese goal machine’s interpreter deposited the masks behind Schalke’s goal, and how they quickly changed into their superhero gear for the cameras once the ball had crossed the line. “It was not our intention to offend Schalke,” he says. “It was a special game at a special moment in the season, because we’d finally begun to string a few wins together and were climbing out of the relegation zone. So we really wanted to do something special. And I guess it looked good.”
While Reus is doing all of the talking, Aubameyang stays strangely quiet. Then, returning to the question about who is who, he emphatically states: “But we’re the same, you know. We’re like brothers.”
In fact, he wasn’t in the least bit concerned that someone could find their stunt silly or interpret it as a slight against Schalke. No, Aubameyang was seriously worried that people might think he sees Reus as just an assistant, or his sidekick.
It’s a characteristic remark. Despite the flashy clothes (he’s partial to Swarovski crystals), the fancy car (he drives a gold Porsche Panamera) and the flamboyant hairdo (his stylist regularly flies in from Paris), Aubameyang is the rarest of modern stars: a man without an ego. When he was asked recently why he’s scoring so freely, he replied without the slightest hint of irony that his team-mates were setting him up so well that many of his goals were easy tap-ins. And as one of those team-mates remarked off the record in Dubai, Aubameyang was probably the only guest at the team’s five-star resort who made his bed before leaving the hotel room. As the far-travelled fan Andre, said, some people are totally different from their image.
“When I first saw him, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Reus recalls, beginning to laugh all over again. “I had never seen someone like that. There were studs all over his clothes, and rhinestones – bling-bling everywhere,” he chortles. “But you must always look behind the exterior, at the person. Auba turned out to be modest – almost shy. He is a fantastic guy.”
“I think the whole club was a bit scared when I first arrived and they saw me,” says Aubameyang. “But it’s just a look. It’s my style.” He looks at Reus and adds: “Marco was very cool when I came here. He knew that it can be difficult when you join a new club, so he was always there to help me. When I wasn’t picked or wasn’t playing as well, he said: ‘Come on, keep your head up, everything will be OK’. That’s how we became friends.”
Aubameyang had travelled a lot before he arrived in Dortmund. Born in France as the