Borussia Dortmund head coach Niko Kovac was impressed with Konstantinos Karetsas for his performance in his first appearance for the club since joining but stressed that he needs more time to fully settle in.
Just six days after being unveiled as Dortmund's new acquisition, the Greek international was handed his first start for BVB today in the Emirates Cup against Arsenal, starting as one of the two attacking midfielders alongside Samuele Inacio.
While he was involved in the opening goal, making an intelligent run to create space for Inacio to latch onto a through ball from Felix Nmecha, Karetsas truly turned heads with a wonderful goal in the 29th minute to put Dortmund 2-0 up.
Daniel Svensson regained possession in their own half, near the halfway line, and laid it off for Karetsas, who drove forward with pace and panache before switching onto his left and curling a sweet strike into the bottom corner beyond Kepa Arrizabalaga's despairing dive.
Against all the odds, Dortmund led 2-0 at the break against the reigning Premier League champions in their own backyard, something that Kovac was highly content with. Addressing the press after the game, he said:
"“The result wasn’t the main focus – that’s been the case for the past few weeks. It’s about us seeing certain things, and today we saw a lot of good things. Sure, there are still a few things to correct, but we’ve made progress. In the first half, we played our way to the first two goals beautifully – I liked that.""
Despite a strong display in the opening stanza, Karetsas was taken off at the break as Dortmund are cautious against placing too much workload on the newly-arrived teenager, who is still just acclimatizing to his new squad.
Kovac reiterated this in his post-match comments while acknowledging his talents. He also heaped praise on two of his young defenders who also came up trumps against Arsenal today with a compelling display.
" "Kosta still needs time. He played 45 minutes today – that’s part of his training regimen. We can see that he’s a really good football player. That’s what every team needs. Filippo also had a really good game today. Both defenders cleared the ball very well – Joane as well as Filippo.”"the BVB manager added
Borussia Dortmund play their final preseason game of the summer against Serie A giants AS Roma on 15 August.
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