In the Phrasenmäher podcast, Fabien Hürzeler talks about his conversations with BVB legend Mats Hummels, who he almost brought to the island in the summer.

Mats Hummels was one of the guarantees of success for BVB on their way to the Champions League final. However, his current season with his new club AS Roma is anything but rosy – should he have made a different decision in the summer?

In the podcast “Phrasenmäher”, St. Pauli’s promoted coach Fabian Hürzeler, who took over the reins at Premier League club Brighton & Hove Albion this summer, talks about his conversations with the veteran. “Hummels’ numbers are very good. He is still a top-10, top-15 player in the world based on last season’s data,” explains the 31-year-old coaching talent. According to Henning Feindt, the Phrasenmäher host, Hummels has already passed the radiological medical check for the Premier League club.

But as is well known, Hummels moved to Italy, not the island. “It’s not just about the numbers and data being right. It also has to fit with the team and the overall system,” explains Hürzeler. And Hummels is known to have a strong personality, which obviously isn’t always easy to integrate into a team structure.

In the end, this was also a possible problem, in addition to the short-term nature of the transfer. “And indeed, when you bring in a winner like Mats Hummels, you also have to consider who you’re taking out of the system in order to maintain the structure. And that wasn’t possible in the short time frame.”

In the first game under new coach Claudio Ranieri, Hummels was finally able to show his skills in Serie A again. He came on as a substitute against SSC Napoli on Sunday. However, he did not perform well in the 1-0 defeat to the 2022/23 Serie A champions either – when Romelu Lukaku scored the winning goal, he was quicker to the ball than the 36-year-old former BVB captain and went on to score the winning goal.