FC Bayern was once so fascinated that they transferred three million euros to Borussia Mönchengladbach for Sinan Kurt. But the then 18-year-old could never meet expectations – and crashed from a sporting perspective. After a long time without a club, they are now moving to the lowlands of Turkish football.
Sinan Kurt was once considered one of the greatest German soccer talents. In 2014, FC Bayern Munich signed him from Borussia Mönchengladbach for around three million euros. In Munich, on Säbener Strasse, the flexible offensive player should mature into a star. But one crash followed the next. In his vita, names of clubs appear that even lovers should hardly know. Most recently, the 26-year-old had been looking for a job for more than a year. For the second time in his career. Now he dares the next new beginning. In Turkey. In league four. At the Karaman FK club, Kurt finds a new sporting home – with great ambitions.
“I’ll work harder here and find my way back to my old strength and performance,” Kurt admitted when he presented himself to the leader, who also wants to make it into the Süper Lig with Kurt’s help. “We would like to play in the first Turkish league in the long term with German virtues and Turkish passion. To do this, we are bringing our experience from Germany to bear and are currently trying to establish our home club in Turkish professional football in the long term. This also includes transfers of German-Turkish talents such as Sinan Kurt “, says Karaman’s honorary president Mehmet Ali Han, who also holds this post at the regional league club Berliner AK.
Kurt, there was once a hype player in Germany who inspired wild dreams. But as big as the hype was, the crash followed with a bang. His career took a particularly bitter turn in early summer 2020. With a penalty kick against the Young Violets in the last minute, Kurt helped his employer at the time, the Austrian second division club WSG Tirol, to rise. “If he hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have won the title,” said manager Stefan Köck about Kurt at the time.
The WSG went up and the player down. Athletic. But why actually? “Due to the restriction on foreigners, it is difficult or impossible for us to keep him with us,” explained Köck at laola1.at. “Many points spoke for Sinan and if he had an Austrian passport, he would probably still be with us.” According to the manager, he always showed his class and was a great and pleasant guy. With all the judgments that the player carries around with him, they can’t do anything in Wattens. “I can only say the best about the boy, he had zero airs and graces, he’s a great person,” said Köck.
Not everywhere in his career, which reads fantastically with the stations Borussia Mönchengladbach, FC Bayern and Hertha BSC, was he said goodbye with such warm sentences as in Wattens. At Borussia, where he went through the entire youth from 2007 to 2014, they were massively upset because Kurt succumbed to the flirt from Munich – accompanied by discord and allegations. In Munich, where Kurt was actually allowed to play for 44 minutes (!) in the Bundesliga under coach Josep Guardiola (substitute for Gianluca Gaudino), they quarreled with the extravagances – expensive helicopter flight and hairdressers flown in – of the young footballer.
After a bitter year and a half with the record champions, he switched to Hertha. Another inglorious time. “If you have to keep motivating a young player and keep crying about mentality, then we have a problem,” said coach Pal Dardai in August 2017. It was words that faded away. In January 2018 he was even banned from team training. About his time with the old lady, Kurt said in April 2019 to “Sport Bild”: It was “no secret that I didn’t have a good relationship with the trainer. I didn’t have a clear head because I knew that there was no level between the coach and me.” That took the fun out of him. Now he wants to find it again. In the lowlands of Turkish football.
