Turkish talent Yildiz from Regensburg at the European Championships: His discoverer is excited

At some point in 2011, Detlef Staude is once again on his way to football training. Staude is a youth coach at SV Sallern in Regensburg. On the way to training for the F-youth team, he picks up young footballers – not all of the parents have to drive. Staude drives his car into the parking lot of a backyard. One of his charges gets in and Staude notices something else. In this backyard, another boy is persistently kicking his football against the wall. Again and again. Staude, a youth coach with decades of experience, sees immediately: This boy has potential.

Staude speaks to him: “Don’t you want to play soccer in a club?” But the little boy, Kenan, five years old, doesn’t want to, he says he’d rather do martial arts. Two weeks later, the game repeats itself: training taxi, backyard squabbling, the same question, again the boy refuses.

Two weeks later, the little boy is suddenly on the training ground of SV Sallern in the north of Regensburg, suddenly wants to play football and immediately shows what he can do. He is actually still eligible to play for the G-youth, but Staude puts him in the older F-youth. The boy’s technique is particularly good for his age. His ambition also sets him apart. Even as a G-youth, Kenan did voluntary running training, running laps around the training ground. A year later, SV Sallern is already too small for him, and he goes to the big club in the city, Jahn Regensburg. A year later, when Kenan is just seven years old, he moves to the even bigger world club FC Bayern Munich. The full name of the five-year-old when he was discovered in the backyard: Kenan Yildiz, now 19 years old, a professional at the traditional Italian club Juventus Turin, and ten-time Turkish international.

Accordingly, youth coach Staude, who has said goodbye to SV Sallern and is now training a women’s team, will be watching closely when Turkey with Yildiz plays this Tuesday (9 p.m., MagentaTV) will face Austria in the European Championship round of 16 in Leipzig. Staude’s discovery has now reached this very highest level. “I’m happy when he scores a goal,” says Yildiz’s former coach. He tries to be as calm as possible.

Yildiz, Turkish father, German mother, is one of the five players in the Turkish squad who could also have started for Germany. In the case of Yildiz, some recently asked why the DFB did not manage to sign the super talent for Germany despite alleged openness to corresponding requests on the Yildiz side. The fact that FC Bayern let the then 17-year-old attacker go to Juventus in 2022 also raised questions. At the European Championship, Yildiz played in all three preliminary round matches, and many consider him to be at least as good as the other Turkish super talent Arda Güler (also 19, Real Madrid).

Yildiz discoverer Staude, who holds a trainer A license, keeps a close eye on Yildiz because of their shared history. As motivation for today’s generation of children, he recently told the story at the SV Christmas party. When Yildiz posed in an Instagram reel wearing a Sallern jersey, the 450-member club, founded in 1951, was thrilled. The jersey set from one season with the later Turkish national player is still available. The board is currently researching which shirt number Yildiz wore back then.

SC West Cologne is looking at the Turkish team with similar enthusiasm – and especially at Salih Özcan from Borussia Dortmund. He became European champion with the German U21 team in 2021 before opting for the Turkish national jersey. And his story began at SC West Cologne before he moved to 1. FC Cologne in 2007, at the age of nine.

Elisabeth Arentz can still remember little Salih. “You could see from the start that he was the best,” says the club’s managing director about the “successful generation” around the now 26-year-old Özcan, who played twice for the Turkish selection in the preliminary round of the European Championship. The 77-year-old is also pleased with the effect on her club. “That makes us proud,” she says. “It is confirmation that we are doing good work.” She can also remember other prominent former SC West players: Marcel Hartel, who has just been promoted to the 1st division with SC St. Pauli and is now moving to the USA, started out at the club from Cologne-Neuehrenfeld, which was formed in 1948 through the merger of SV Rhenania and FC Phönix, as did four-time national team goalkeeper Manfred Manglitz.

Yildiz’s sponsor Staude from Regensburg is already aware that the discovery and subsequent development of one of the greatest talents in world football was linked to a lot of luck. “Some people have talent, but something is usually missing. With him, everything was perfect,” says the 60-year-old, and then recalls a former youth national player under his wing. At some point he tore his cruciate ligament – and his dream of becoming a professional was over. “It’s like winning the lottery,” says Staude. After all, one of his young footballers later became European athletics champion, another became bowling world champion. But a footballer at the European Championships? “That’s the ultimate.”