1) One hundred goals in a season
While he is now known as one of the industry’s leading hard-to-do defenders, this has not been the case. During his time with the rot-Weiss Walldorf youth team – where his father was coach – he has already scored more than a hundred goals in an unmarried season and helped the team compete in a three-year career in which they lost only once. . “I used to play as an offensive striker or midfielder at the time,” Georg told Spox a few years ago.
So how did you get to the other side of the field? Well, after joining the Hoffenheim Youth Academy at the age of 15 in 2010, he asked to upgrade the central definaner given its length (now it measures 6.5″) because all the other players in this position were injured.” He played so well there that he hasn’t played anywhere else since, ” recalls Georg.
2) Great breakthrough
Just three years later, he played in the Bundesliga. He made his debut on the most sensible flight at the age of 17 on the 33rd day of the 2012/13 season, defeating Hamburg 4–1 at home. However, he trusted enough to make his appearance a week later, and it is possible that what is at stake was not greater.
Hoffenheim was at the back of the table at the time and had to beat no less than Borussia Dortmund on the last day of the season, while waiting for Augsburg or Fortuna Dusseldorf to lose. With Hoffenheim 2-1 in the 85th minute, Sele stepped in to seal the defense and see the result over the line.
“It’s very mocking,” Father Georg recalls. “But then he won a header against Robert Lewandowski and took the ball to Marco Reus. It calmed his nerves.” Hoffenheim retained their victory and, thanks to Dusseldorf’s defeat in Hannover, also participated in the relegation matches that followed Kaiserslautern, who held the club in the Bundesliga.
See: Hoffenheim’s victory over Dortmund in 2013
3) Hoffenheim’s man
Hoffenheim’s head coach at the time, Markus Gisdol, obviously liked what he saw and rewarded S-le with a normal first-team spot in the following 2013/14 season. He has played 25 times in the Bundesliga, at 20 and scoring 4 goals as the team finished without relegation problems in the ninth.
Knowing that he was only 18 at the time, it is unexpected that several more experienced and older teammates liked the team. He missed not a minute of action in the first 14 league games of the 2014/15, but a cruciate ligament injury sustained in Round 15 kept him out of play for the rest of the season. However, he returned to his most productive level the following year, betting the full 90 minutes in 33 of the 34 Bundesliga matches.
4) Olympic silver medalist
Unsurprisingly for a player who has represented Germany in all grades of under-16 youth, he decided on his country’s under-21 team at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil. He played all six of the team’s matches in the tournament and scored his penalty in the penalty shootout in the final he eventually lost to Brazil.
5) Turkey’s confusion
As familiar as it is to see S-le in a German blouse in those days, her loyalty may have disappeared in her youth. Or just him?
“When I was in the under-16s, the head coach of the Turkey senior team called me,” S-le recalls. “He looked for me to play for Turkey because he said my last call sounded Turkish. I’ll have to let him down. My call is not Turkish, but Hungarian. My father was born here [in Germany], but had a Hungarian passport until he was 16.
6) First Hoffenheim Academy graduate to play for Germany
Turkey’s (inevitable) loss largely Germany’s gain. After his demonstrations at the Rio Olympics, Joachim Lew made his senior overseas debut on August 31, 2016, a 2-0 friendly win over Finland. In doing so, he has become the first player of the Hoffenheim Youth Academy to form Germany at the senior level.
And despite the fierce festival of the central rear seats, it has been a normal ever since and has recently started automatically. He scored his first foreign goal in a 3-0 friendly over Russia in November 2018.
7) Football in the family
Niklas’ brother Fabian, 3 years his senior, was also a talented footballer in his youth and even turned down an offer to join Mainz’s U19 team to concentrate on his college studies. “Technically, he was bigger than me, ” said Niklas once. “But he had another mentality. I didn’t faint for the party!”
Fabian won a football scholarship to St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, where he studied a bachelor’s degree in business administration, economics and finance.
8) Boateng fan
Tall, powerful, Gerguy and able to let out fainting from behind: it’s no wonder S-he was compared to Jerome Boateng in his training years. It is also an applicable comparison, as he has long been a fan of the kind that would one day be his teammate at Bayern.
“I don’t have idols because I need to do my thing,” Sle told the Hoffenheim’s online page in 2015. “But clearly there is a player who is a reference and that’s Jerome Boateng. He’s the player I admire. That’s why I was very satisfied when he got in touch here when I injured [the cruciate ligament that ruptured in 2014]. Mendity in the hospital when I was suddenly given a text message from you. It was a huge thing for me.”
9) He becomes a teacher
If that was Sil’s reaction to a text message, then he creates his joy by putting on Bayern Munich’s blouse next to him in the locker room. In January 2017, he was shown to be registering for Hoffenheim in time for the 2017/18 season.
Initially recruited to dominate Boateng and Mats Hummels, the first-choice defensive duo for the club and country at the time, he still made 27 respectable Bundesliga appearances on his first goal at Bayern. “If I can even get close to what Jerome has achieved, I’ll be very satisfied with my career,” he told Kicker after I got to the lion cub. “I would never say I’m at the same point as him.”
And yet, in 2018/19, he had made his way in the first team. “Niklas does very well with his speed and doesn’t think too much,” said head coach Niko Kovac. “He is the first striker in the selection of the other two [Hummels and Boateng]. They’ll have to fight.
10) Fast Goselz
Given the length of S-le and its 97 kg (213 lb) chassis, he believes it would have the turning radius and acceleration of a 19th-century steam train. In fact, the opposite is true. The defender is a wall forged from lean muscles, which gives it a deceptive twist. So much so that the Kingsley Coman winger is the only Bayern player to adjust to its more sensitive speed of 21.6 miles depending on the time.
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