Florian Neuhaus and the Fickleness of Football
Or how bad timing derailed a promising career
Regardless of how old I get, I keep getting surprised by how fickle football - and fate - can be.
Back in 2021 - that's just four years ago - Florian Neuhaus was one of the most wanted midfielders in world football. Touted as the closest thing Germany had produced to Toni Kroos since Kroos himself, clubs were lining up for him. Borussia Mönchengladbach, unsurprisingly, had no interest in selling their star.
What really kept him there, though, was the post-Covid market. Most clubs were still reeling financially, the transfer market was a depressed one and no club made an offer big enough to tempt Mönchengladbach.
So Neuhaus stayed. Which was fine. Until he suffered a partial ACL injury in September of 2022 that cost him a spot in the German squad for the 2022 World Cup and, in hindsight, derailed his career.
He was never the same player after that injury; his mobility was never the same and he last just enough pace to make him more of a liability than an asset at the centre of the park. The clubs that had been looking at him moved away and, eventually, even Moenchengladbach lost faith.
To a point. They stopped playing him - last season he made just 17 appearances and most of them came from the bench - yet he was still among their best paid players.
That much emerged was revealed by Neuhaus himself when he was filmed (visibly drunk) commenting how Moenchengladbach's sporting director Roland Virkus 'is the worst sporting director in the world' citing his own €4 million annual salary as proof.
One can admire the self-deprecating humour. Unless you're involved in running (or even supporting) Moenchengladbach. Which they clearly didn't, suspending and fining the player.
Next up is a move but, this time round, there are no European giants lining up for him. Instead, his most likely destination looks like the 2 Bundesliga.
He’s 28. Not old. Not done. But almost. And certainly nowhere near where anyone expected him to be in 2021.
Four years ago, he was tipped to be Germany’s midfield metronome. Today, he’s a cautionary tale of timing, injury, and how quickly football forgets.
Fickle, indeed.
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