The Bundeliga's Brits.

 

The Bundesliga is know for being the launching pad for many bright careers throughout the world of football. Young stars from all over the world come to hone their skills in the Bundesliga providing moments of individual genius as well as team genius. Over the past years the Bundesliga has really started to become the second home for young English and American talents, who get taken into academy's play well and then are sold for a big profit. If you can tell from the title this will be especially about the Brits in the Bundesliga.

The story starts with Kevin Keegan a native of Armthrope, England. He is a 3 time English Champion, 1 time European Club Champion and 1 time German Champion. To add the cherry on top of his trophy case you can add the 1978 Ballon d'Or and 1979 Ballon d'Or. A great career. His Bundesliga journey starts in the 1978/79 season where he transfers from Liverpool to Hamburg for 1.29 million dollars. He played only 90 games in total in the Bundesliga scoring 32 times, he then left Hamburg on July 1st to join Southampton.

This was the first Englishman who played in the Bundesliga and over the next few years a couple guys would come, guys like Tony Woodcock and Peter Hobday but the second really signifagant English/Candian player is Owen Hargreaves. 

Hargreaves played at Bayern where he won a Champions League and 4 German titles. His story is more similar to the more recent ones where he decided to joins Bayerns U19, and then got promoted all the way up to the first team where he played 218 games in all competition. Bayern later sold him to Manchester United for 27.5 million dollars. At United he won 3 Premier League titles before moving to Manchester City in 2011 for 2.2 million dollars to win one more Premier League title and then retire.

Now we reach basically present day. The real pioneer of young British men coming to the Bundesliga, Jadon Sancho. An extreme talent who in just 80 games has the record number of assist(39) and is 9 goals away from tying the record number of goals(39) for a British player in Bundesliga history. He is just 20 years old. His career is kind of similar to Hargreaves. He joined Dortmund from the Manchester City U19 and then has become a star since then. No one else has had the success Sancho has had and there are only 2 players currently who I dare say could have similar success. Sancho is a generational footballer and would most likely start for any team in the world.

Over the past years of the influx of British players many of them have come on loan, to grow their skills. Not many have been like Sancho and Hargreaves and are on permanent deals in Germany. You get so many young talented players to make the league better. This is trend will hopefully stay a trend for many more years, because these players will get more chances and will develop far better in Germany then they would in England. You already have a new wave with two 17 year old Jude Bellingham and Jamal Musiala, and hopefully many more.