National player Nico Schlotterbeck wants to stop playing football as a youth, but he struggles through. At Borussia Dortmund, the 22-year-old can now feel how strikers are “afraid of me”. However, he is self-critical about his risky game, including “concentration problems”.
Ironically, a duel against his new employer was the aha moment for national soccer player Nico Schlotterbeck. “A decisive moment for me was a game against Dortmund last season. That’s when I realized for the first time that the strikers were also afraid of me,” said the central defender in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. In the previous season he played for SC Freiburg before moving to Borussia Dortmund for the new season.
Schlotterbeck almost stopped playing soccer when he was young. When he was in the U15s of the Stuttgarter Kickers, “I didn’t have such a good time, I rarely played and I wasn’t accepted into the U16s either. Then I thought: what do I do now, do I stop? Was it all the effort for nothing?” said the 22-year-old. “From today’s perspective, the doubts came at exactly the right time, something clicked for me back then. My reaction was: I’ll show you now! After that, things really only went uphill.”
His former U17 coach at Karlsruher SC, Lukas Kwasniok (today head coach SC Paderborn), sent him to central defence. “He showed me what it means to be a defender and what it takes. At some point he said: If I focus fully on this position, it can be really good. And now it’s gotten so good that I play for Borussia Dortmund,” said Schlotterbeck. In addition to Kwasniok, Freiburg coach Christian Streich and Urs Fischer from Union Berlin were also very important for his development as a defensive player.
His sometimes risky game is certainly a “fine line. I’m a player who sometimes takes a lot of risks, and then there are always a few moments when I have concentration problems – like recently in the national team”. He conceded a penalty twice shortly before the end – against Israel and against England in the Nations League. National coach Hansi Flick nevertheless “has his back, externally and internally. He gives me confidence and says that something like this can happen, but he also points out that a penalty like that in the 90th minute can mean the end of a tournament .”
