“It’s crazy”
A little more than five years ago, Kevin Behrens played in the Regionalliga Südwest for 1. FC Saarbrücken. This season, the 32-year-old striker made his Champions League debut for 1. FC Union Berlin and made his mark for the German national team with four Bundesliga goals in the first seven games. The Bremen native’s path is a little football fairy tale in a business in which the focus is often primarily on who the next big talent is.
If Behrens were to leave the “Iron”, where he is under contract until the end of the season with an option for another year, there would probably not be a huge transfer fee. The striker’s market value – currently 2 million euros – will increase significantly as part of the Bundesliga update next Wednesday. With his nomination before this update, Behrens has already placed himself among the players who had the lowest market value when they were first appointed.
Behrens twelfth: lowest market value for 1st DFB nomination
Only eleven players had a lower valuation than Behrens when they were first appointed – the transfer market market values have been in existence since 2004. Christian Schulz, who played four international matches and was appointed for the first time by Jürgen Klinsmann in December 2004, and Christian Träsch are the only players which had a market value of less than one million euros: 800,000 euros each. The ex-Stuttgart player appeared ten times for the DFB team and was in national coach Joachim Löw’s squad for the first time in May 2009.
Behrens told reporters during the national team’s trip to the United States that he was “a little shocked and very surprised” when Julian Nagelsmann contacted him. He is of course hoping for his debut, on Saturday evening at 9 p.m. the DFB team will play against the United States, but basically he just wants to “play football, do my best and show that you deserve to be here.” Last weekend, after Union’s 2:4 defeat against BVB, he said: “The fact that I, who played in the regional league six years ago, am now a regular for the national team, is indescribable. Of course I’m extremely happy about it. It’s madness. A dream, unbelievable.”
He also told the anecdote about Nagelsmann’s call: “I was sitting in the car and had two missed calls. Then I called back. Of course you have doubts as to whether you are being taken for a ride. Some teammates couldn’t believe it either. But they are all happy for me because they see how hard I work, how hard I give, how much passion I always have in football.”
In a video clip published by the DFB, he added: “I was just in the dressing room or in the changing room wing at Union. When I recognized his voice, I thought: ‘Wow, that’s crazy.'” Nagelsmann asked “two or three times whether I was really Kevin Behrens because he had previously given me the wrong number. That was really funny because it was an icebreaker. We both laughed then.”
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