Niko Kovac hails Yamamoto’s instant impact in Dortmund’s pre-season start

Takato Yamamoto scores in his Borussia Dortmund debut as Niko Kovac’s side start pre-season with a comeback win.

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Goals from Justin Lerma, Serhou Guirassy and Takato Yamamoto secured a 3-1 win for Borussia Dortmund at the start of their pre-season against Rot-Weiß Oberhausen. While the Ecuadorian attacker scored on his debut, the summer signing for the U23s also dominated the headlines.

Yamamoto joined the side competing in Regionalliga West on a season-long loan from Gamba Osaka. “I saw him for the first time on Thursday. He showed some good things. I really saw some promising stuff there, and that’s going to be a joy for us,” said Niko Kovac about the player who will turn 19 next month.

If the Japanese midfielder continues this form during the pre-season, which includes games against Arsenal and AS Roma in the Emirates Cup, he could boost his chances of playing for the first-team.

The Croat coach also spoke in general about the new faces in the first pre-season test. “These are lads who clearly have potential. But, of course, there is room for improvement. The lads need to get to know each other and quickly learn what we want.”

Kovac looks forward to welcoming back the players who represented their countries at the World Cup. “We want to step up and improve in every area. But things will really get going once all the national team players are here. At least, the first group will head to Japan with us.”

Borussia Dortmund will resume their preparation on Monday before traveling to Japan next weekend. “After eight weeks of vacation and a very intense first week of training, the goal was for the lads to just play in a friendly against a fourth-division team and show things that we might not have seen in training,” added Kovac about their first pre-season game.