Out of the crisis at the crisis club ?: Max Meyer fights against ridicule

Sunday 31st January 2021

Out of the crisis at the crisis club?
Max Meyer fights against ridicule

He is in the preliminary squad for the 2014 World Cup and is even more successful at FC Schalke 04 than Leon Goretzka. But then they parted ways: Max Meyer moved to England, but did not make the breakthrough he had hoped for. Now the 25-year-old is starting over in Cologne.

At 18, Max Meyer almost became football world champion. Joachim Löw had called the teenager into his provisional squad for the 2014 World Cup. The national coach finally deleted him as one of seven professionals from the final squad, which then won the world title in Rio.

Leon Goretzka, seven months older, was one of the four fellow sufferers that Löw canceled shortly before the training camp. Who today can serve as a model for how Meyer's career could have turned out. For four more years, until the runner-up in 2018, they played side by side at Schalke. Meyer even had more competitive games (192: 147) and more goals (22:19).

But then they parted ways. Today Goretzka is a regular at Bayern Munich and a permanent member of the national team, according to transfermarkt.de, worth 60 million euros. After two and a half mostly frustrating years at Crystal Palace in England, Meyer is listed at three million euros. And with a half-year contract with Bundesliga relegation candidate 1. FC Köln, it is almost a complete new start.

Swaggering video of the father worsens image

The break in Meyer's career can be put in spring 2018. Public disputes arose in the course of the contract negotiations. Meyer accused Schalke of bullying and was even suspended shortly before the end of the season. The manager at the time Christian Heidel said that Meyer's advisor Roger Wittmann had called his protégé a "world class player".

It's a catchphrase that has often been used to ridicule Meyer since then. And that was brought out when he returned to the Bundesliga, as was the video of his father, who was behind the wheel of a car in 2020 and described it as a "paid Lambo from the bankrupt club" (Schalke). Meyer junior "decidedly" distanced himself. He was "deeply shocked by this video. That doesn't fit into my world."

In Cologne, the now 25-year-old now wants to zero a lot and recommend himself for higher tasks. "It is important for him to present himself," said Horst Heldt, who was decisive for the transfer. Because Cologne's sports director already worked with Meyer – in the good Schalke times. "And contact never broke off," said Heldt. He even visited Meyer once in London.

According to reports, Meyer is foregoing a lot of money in order to be able to play himself back in focus under Heldt and trainer Markus Gisdol, whom he also knows from Schalke. It seems questionable whether he can make up the career gap on Goretzka. But it is clear that he can do more than he has been able to show in the last three years. Heldt therefore hopes that Meyer will lead FC to relegation and get back on track: "It can be a win-win situation."