Fiete Arp with Kiel now tops
Fallen Bayern prodigy is playing great again
December 26, 2023, 10:59 a.m
The hype was huge when Fiete Arp scored Bundesliga goals for HSV in the 2017/18 season. FC Bayern wins the competition for the young footballer, but then the bright star burns out very quickly. Even a move to Holstein Kiel in the 2nd league doesn’t help for a long time. But suddenly Arp is back.
For Fiete Arp, the end of the year was a success. The Holstein Kiel striker scored twice in the 3-0 win against Hannover 96. The 23-year-old has never achieved this before in professional football. “It became apparent to me when I was warming up because every ball flew in somehow,” said Arp.
The Bad Segeberger native played a major role in Kiel winning the autumn championship in the 2nd Bundesliga. He scored five goals and one assist in the last eight games of the season. “After the start of the first half of the season, this is an extremely cool end to the year because it feels really good and hard-earned,” he said. Shortly before, it seemed as if Arp no longer had a future in Kiel – or in professional football at all.
A little look back: Arp was trained at Hamburger SV and was at times considered one of the greatest talents in German professional football. In 2017, he was awarded the Fritz Walter Gold Medal as the greatest talent of his year, following in the footsteps of national players such as Leon Goretzka and Timo Werner, who previously won this award. Arp sparked hype in Hamburg when he scored two Bundesliga goals for HSV in the 2017/2018 season.
“We have a lot of fun with him”
In the summer of 2019 he moved to FC Bayern Munich, but did not play a single Bundesliga game for the record champions and was mainly used for the 2nd team in the 3rd league and regional league. The move to Kiel followed in the summer of 2021 – initially on loan, then permanently a year later. However, he usually didn’t get beyond the role of a reserve player and only scored three goals in the 2nd Bundesliga in two seasons. It is all the more surprising how strong he has suddenly developed in his last year of contract with Holstein Kiel.
“I started with myself to change things, to work on myself and to find the faults in myself,” he said. “I said at the beginning of the season that I wanted to try to become a new person, a new player. And perhaps these are the first fruits that I will bear somewhere.”
When coach Marcel Rapp was asked why Arp was suddenly experiencing an improvement in form, he replied: “Good training, that’s the main reason. I’m not surprised about his consistency because he’s been training well the whole time.” Due to the strong competition in the attack, Arp had to take a back seat at times. “But then he got his chance and took advantage of it. Now we have a lot of fun with him. He can implement the good training on the pitch, which he may have lacked a bit in the past,” said Rapp.
His strike partner Benedikt Pichler said about the interaction with Arp: “We are both players who have dynamics. In the last games, in which Fiete also played, this dynamic gave us an advantage because we are just a bit more unpredictable. ” Arp himself is happy to have finally overcome the long form crisis: “It feels really good.”