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Sinan Kurt at the championship celebration with FC Bayern 2015. He was only supposed to make one game for the club
Photo:
imago sportfotodienst / imago images / MIS
Actually, this story should have started in one of the big football metropolises in Europe and not in a hotel room in a Slovakian city of 80,000, around 100 kilometers east of the Austrian border.
But now Sinan Kurt is here in Nitra, together with seven German footballers, most of whom were recently unemployed.
The city has been badly hit by the coronavirus.
There is a curfew.
The footballers of FC Nitra are only allowed to train with a special permit.
Kurt doesn't mind being stuck in the hotel most of the time.
The 24-year-old told SPIEGEL that he simply wanted to get away from Germany, out of the media spotlight, which he wasn't sure about even in the regional league: “I was pigeonholed in Germany many years ago, here in Slovakia is that different. "
Sinan Kurt was once considered one of the greatest talents in German football.
When he was 18, he moved to FC Bayern and started coach Pep Guardiola.
Today he plays in the Slovak football province and says he is happy for the first time in a long time.
How could he fall so low so quickly?
And why did he end up in Slovakia of all places?
The story of his descent tells of false self-assessment and accusations, but also of media pressure and a lack of luck.
The one about his arrival in Slovakia is about a car dealer from Nuremberg who has built up a team full of professionals around Kurt in Nitra who once failed in Germany and are now hoping for one last chance.
Like Kurt.
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Kurt 2013 in the Borussia Mönchengladbach jersey: "That was really brutal"
Photo: imago images
Before Sinan Kurt even got into the Bundesliga, there was already a scandal around him.
At Borussia Mönchengladbach, the youth national player was a promise and was compared to Marco Reus.
He should move up from the junior team to the first team.
But then a transfer dispute broke out between Gladbach and FC Bayern, at the end of which Borussia's manager Max Eberl accused the offensive player of disloyalty.
At the age of 18, Kurt moved to Munich for a € 3 million transfer fee, was hostile and had to justify himself publicly: "I'm not a rip-off," he said.
But the image stuck to him anyway.
In Gladbach it is said that Kurt made a guarantee as a condition to stay on the Lower Rhine.
Kurt contradicts that today: »I just said that I want to switch to a new club.
And then I had this backpack on, ”he says.
Kurt never really forgot that negative experience at the start of his career.
He says: "That was brutal, I was still a young person."
Helicopter excursion to St. Tropez
He himself also contributed to the image of the enraptured young star.
During his time at FC Bayern there were reports of a hairdresser who had flown in and a trip by helicopter to St. Tropez.
After a year and a half and a single 44-minute stint in the Bundesliga, Kurt was sold to Hertha BSC.
But he should also fail at the middle class club.
His relationship with Berlin coach Pál Dárdai was strained.
The Hungarian criticized Kurt several times in public: sometimes for lack of fitness, sometimes for a lack of attitude.
Like Guardiola before, Dárdai finally sorted him out.
Kurt was on the pitch for Hertha for four minutes in the Bundesliga.
For the huge talent it was barely more than one half in league one.
If you ask Kurt today where he took the wrong turn in his career, he'll talk about changing clubs, but not about mistakes: “I don't know what I should regret.
When I switched to FC Bayern, I fulfilled a dream.
And that I wanted to try again in the Bundesliga afterwards, why should I regret that, «says Kurt.
The step from youth to men's football is difficult, and luck is part of it.
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Kurt with coach Pep Guardiola (left) in a friendly game in 2014.
In the Bundesliga he should only play 44 minutes for Bayern
Photo: imago images / MIS
Kurt cites a serious ankle injury that he sustained at training camp in early 2017.
At a time when he thought he was about to get regular assignments in Berlin.
He was unable to recover from that, either physically or mentally.
At first he only played in Hertha's U23, then he moved to Austria in the second division.
At WSG Tirol he made 13 games in the second half of 2019. After the promotion, however, Tirol decided against him because of a foreigner restriction.
Kurt was without a club for over a year and kept fit with a personal trainer in Krefeld.
He calls it "a very difficult time" today.
His family had to take care of him.
"Suddenly, that rhythm of training and games that previously determined your whole life is gone, you feel somehow out of place," says Kurt.
In September 2020 he joined the fourth division Straelen in the Regionalliga West.
He played seven games up to an injury, but hardly stood out.
Then Peter Hammer called him and told him about Slovakia.
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Kurt in the fourth division at FC Straelen
Photo: van der Velden / imago images / photo booth
Hammer is a car dealer from Nuremberg.
At the turn of the year, a Bavarian investor group bought the majority in FC Nitra and installed Hammer as the new sports director based on his knowledge of Slovak football.
The 55-year-old was a game advisor specializing in Slovakia for ten years.
He likes to tell the anecdote about how he once guided Marek Mintal and Robert Vittek to 1. FC Nürnberg.
Wolfgang Wolf was a trainer in Nuremberg in 2003 and moved into the house of Hammer's parents.
Because Wolf needed a striker and an attacking midfielder for his team before the start of the season, he asked Hammer almost jokingly whether there were good footballers in Slovakia as well as cheap cars.
Hammer recommended, as he says today, Mintal and Vittek.
The two attackers should shoot the club in the following second division season with 28 goals for promotion.
From then on, Hammer was a partner in a Slovak agency for which he placed talents in Germany.
Nine professionals who have already played in Germany
In the summer, Hammer had already called some German player agents looking for eliminated professionals in view of the impending takeover of FC Nitra.
He found: Sinan Kurt.
In Straelen, he had agreed to be allowed to change should a professional club knock in the winter.
"I'm very proud that we were able to sign him," says Hammer, "he's a sensational boy in human terms too."
In January he brought to Nitra, along with Kurt, nine players who had already worked in German football: Eroll Zejnullahu (26, formerly Union Berlin), Oliver Bias (19, RB Leipzig), Benjamin Kindsvater (28, 1860 Munich), Yanni Regäsel (25, Hertha), Ekin Celebi (20, Nürnberg II), Ramzi Ferjani (19, Dortmund II), Ole Käuper (24, Bremen II), Kilian Pagliuca (24, Jena) and the Slovak Erik Jendrisek (34, formerly Kaiserslautern, Freiburg, Cottbus).
Like Kurt, some of them were stranded.
Hammer could not lure them with high salaries, the total budget is according to their own statements at 1.2 million euros, but with the prospect of being recommended for higher tasks in a quiet environment with a newly built stadium.
Kurt says he wants to pep up the club and pass on his professional experience to the young Slovaks.
He sounds like a 32-year-old.
Perhaps that's because the six years since he left Mönchengladbach have been so overflowing with experiences.
As if they were counting twice.
He's not worried about his future right now, he's just happy to be able to play professional football again, to be needed again.
Lucky, maybe he'll have it this time.
On Saturday Sinan Kurt came on in the first game after the winter break against bottom of the table FK Pohronie in the 66th minute.
FC Nitra lost 1: 3.
It still seems a long way back.
Icon: The mirror
