Berlin – Germany’s World Cup winner Mario Gotze has been left out of Borussia Dortmund’s squad for Tuesday’s Champions League last 16, first-leg, clash against Benfica.

The 24-year-old has fallen out of favour with coach Thomas Tuchel after a string of below-par performances and is struggling with a leg injury, which kept him out of Saturday’s shock 2-1 defeat at Bundesliga bottom side Darmstadt.

“For him, the game in Lisbon came a bit too soon,” Dortmund’s director of sport Michael Zorc told BVB.de.

Injury and loss of form mean Gotze, who scored the winning goal in the 2014 World Cup final, has played just 24 minutes of football so far in 2017.

Dortmund has been boosted with the return of both captain Marcel Schmelzer and Lukasz Piszczek, who missed the Darmstadt defeat with injury.

Wingers Ousmane Dembele and Marco Reus have both shaken off knocks picked up in Darmstadt.

Tuesday’s fixture at the Estadio da Luz will be the first meeting between Benfica and Dortmund since the first round of the 1963-64 European Cup, a tie the German club won 6-2 on aggregate.

The second leg in Germany is scheduled for March 8.

With Arsenal set for a Bavarian trip to play Bayern Munich, one would assume German World Cup winner Mesut Ozil would play a part in Arsene Wenger’s plans for the first match of a two-legged tilt.

Perhaps not.

“I felt he was not completely confident technically,” Wenger told reporters, courtesy of the Guardian. “That’s a problem because you think he can deliver something special.”

Yet to score in 2017 after a red-hot start to the season saw the Gelsenkirchen-born playmaker bag six goals in his first ten matches in all competitions, Ozil has looked off the pace.

With his drop in form coinciding with Arsenal’s dire stretch of unconvincing results, Wenger concedes that something is amiss with his star table-setter.

“He did things that he is not used to doing. He needs to find confidence again. He misses chances that don’t look unfeasible,” the Frenchman added.

Wenger also admitted that he spoke to Ozil about his form on Friday, with the recent displays of benched trio Olivier Giroud, Danny Welbeck, and Lucas Perez only complicating Arsenal’s squad selection conundrum.

After winning a Champions League group for the first time since 2011-12, Arsenal holds a slight advantage over the Bavarian giant courtesy of playing the second leg at home, and with that, Wenger appears to understand how vital a positive performance in the first leg is despite his side’s recent dip in form.

“Experience helps to anticipate the problems that you face when it doesn’t work,” Wenger offered. “You know that if you do not win the confidence drops even more. That is not what is needed to go into a game like Bayern in the Champions League.”

Real Madrid welcomed Gareth Bale back to group training Sunday, marking the Welsh star’s return after being sidelined for nearly three months with an ankle injury that required surgery in late November.

Bale was forced off near the hour mark of Real Madrid’s 2-1 win over Sporting Lisbon on Nov. 22 and diagnosed with a “traumatic dislocation of the peroneal tendons in his right ankle.”

He’s missed 17 matches for the club, but could be made available for the upcoming Champions League Round of 16 tilt against Italian outfit Napoli on Feb. 15 at the Santiago Bernabeu.

In just 16 appearances with Real Madrid this season, the 27-year-old has scored seven goals and recorded three assists. His return will be hailed by manager Zinedine Zidane, who turned to Lucas Vazquez in Bale’s absence.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has expressed his sadness and called for an investigation after Friday’s stadium tragedy in the northern city of Uige took the lives of at least 17 people, according to Reuters.

Those among the dead include children, according to Portuguese reports obtained by the Associated Press, with dozens of people at the venue suffering injuries.

The Girabola meeting between Santa Rita de Cassia and Recreativo do Libolo attracted fans which exceeded the ground’s 8,000 capacity, with the disaster apparently occurring when hundreds of supporters stormed the gates in a bid to gain entry.

A medical official told the BBC that “some of those who fell became trapped and suffocated at the venue” due to the ensuing stampede.

Dos Santos said in a statement:

I express my solidarity with the families of the deceased and have instructed the Provincial Government of Uige to provide all necessary assistance to the injured and have given guidance to the competent authorities to open an inquiry that will establish the cause of this serious incident.

Five of those injured are reported to be in a serious condition.

“Some people had to walk on top of other people. There were 76 casualties, of whom 17 died,” Ernesto Luis, director general of the local hospital, said.

State news agency Angop understands the Ministry of Sports has also called for the local football association and provincial authorities to launch an investigation into the cause of the incident.