Sweeping leaves as a punishment
Max Kruse: “I was forced to do community service”
Updated 11/26/2025 – 4:11 p.mReading time: 1 min.
An illegally modified moped got Max Kruse into trouble at a young age. Shortly afterwards he found himself in a kindergarten.
Long before Max Kruse kept the Bundesliga on its toes, he had a race with the police in his youth – that had consequences. In his podcast “Flatterball”, which he hosts together with former professional Martin Harnik, the 37-year-old reported: “I was forced to do community service, which I then had to do in a kindergarten by sweeping leaves. That was unbelievable.”
Kruse remembered how, when he was around 15 or 16 years old, he drove a “Speedfight 2” in Hamburg – a scooter that was originally only permitted with a moped license at a maximum speed of 30 km/h. But Kruse had converted it: “Mine was going 80 km/h or so,” he explained.
With a friend who also owned a scooter, Kruse decided to run away from school. “We were then followed by a police car. As you do when you’re a supposedly criminal gang, we split up and each hoped that he wouldn’t follow us,” Kruse continued. In vain: The officers pursued the now 37-year-old’s conspicuous vehicle. “Then I was stopped and then my scooter was checked and it showed 80 km/h.”
Kruse did his community service in kindergarten and now remembered: “Sweeping leaves isn’t necessarily hard, but it was just annoying.”