Nicolas Kühn wears the Fritz Walter Medal for super talent in gold, he has already shot down Manchester City and is probably the best player of a double winner from the Champions League. If you were to talk to passers-by in any German city, you would probably still see questioning faces: Nicolas Kühn is the German soccer star that no one knows.
At least not in Germany. The right winger is indispensable for Borussia Dortmund’s opponents Celtic Glasgow – Kühn has collected an impressive 13 scorer points in the first nine competitive games of this season. He scored five goals himself and also provided eight assists, one of them in the 5-1 win against Slovan Bratislava at the start of the Champions League. On Tuesday (9 p.m./Prime Video) he wants to shake the shaky BVB defense and draw even more attention to his big goal: “I want to be in the national team at some point.”
Nicolas Kühn moved to FC St. Pauli as a nine-year-old
That sounds very ambitious, but Robin Gosens, for example, also made it into the national jersey via detours. Nicolas Kühn was born in Wunstorf and moved to FC St. Pauli’s youth team at the age of nine. He later played for Hannover 96, RB Leipzig’s youth team, Ajax Amsterdam’s reserve team and Bayern Munich II proper training, which initially enabled him to play 27 second division games (three goals) for Erzgebirge Aue.
Via Rapid Vienna, where he made a strong impact, he moved to Celtic for 3.5 million euros. Ever since his two goals in the 4-3 win in the preseason game against Man City, Kühn has become an integral part of the Scots’ starting line-up. At the start of the season, after his goal, he did a little dance with two teammates – “rehearsed,” as he revealed after the somewhat awkward performance. On Tuesday he can introduce himself on a bigger stage: But the national coach hasn’t announced his presence yet. (sid/lk)
