Transfer hammer at Landesliga football club SV Scherpenberg: Which player is moving to Asberg and what coach Ralf Gemmer hopes to gain from him. The NRZ reports exclusively.
At the start of the pre-season on Tuesday evening (27 June) at 7.30 p.m., it was a certainty: Football-Landesliga runners-up SV Scherpenberg had landed a real transfer coup.
One year after leaving professional football, former Champions League striker Konstantinos Mitroglou has joined coach Ralf Gemmer’s team.
The 35-year-old former Greek international from Neukirchen-Vluyn joined in the first training session on the Asberg artificial pitch in good spirits and obviously fit.
In the future, Mitroglou, who played in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, will compensate for the departure of top scorers Darius Strode (20 goals/to Göttingen) and Maximilian Stellmach (15 goals/to Düsseldorf district league team FC Kosova).
Connection to SV Scherpenberg via Damian Raczka
Kostas Mitroglou’s commitment to SV Scherpenberg was already in the offing a year ago. In the summer of 2022, however, family reasons prevented Mitroglou from immediately committing himself back home after retiring from professional football.
The connection to the local Moers club was made through defender Damian Raczka, who now serves as one of head coach Ralf Gemmer’s co-trainers. Raczka, a former Regionalliga defender, played with Kostas Mitroglou in Borussia Mönchengladbach’s youth team. At that time, he was part of the U19 Bundesliga team, which also included former international Marko Marin, who was only 16 years old.
Kostas Mitroglou’s market value at 200,000 euros
According to the internet portal transfermarkt.de, Kostas Mitroglou’s market value is still 200,000 euros. Most recently, the centre-forward played for SpVgg Rheurdt-Schaephuysen, who were relegated from the Kreisliga A. He was also a member of the club’s team. He scored eleven goals in the second half of the season. But the joy of football with old friends was ultimately very limited. Success did not materialise, the quality of the players was not enough to keep Rheurdt in the A-League.
With the commitment in Scherpenberg, Mitroglou’s path “back to his Lower Rhine football roots” should be a more appealing one, even if the goals of an ambitious Landesliga club can hardly be compared to the challenges of the goal scorer in his professional days.
Via Preußen Vluyn and SV Neukirchen to MSV Duisburg
The attacker, who grew up in Neukirchen-Vluyn, has been a Niederrhein native since his parents emigrated from Greece in the late 1980s. Mitroglou started at the age of six with Preußen Vluyn, then switched to SV Neukirchen at 13. As is well known, the two former football clubs have formed FC Neukirchen-Vluyn since 2018, which plays in the district league and is also said to have sought the services of the ex-professional.
One factor in Mitroglou’s career was his early appearances in the Niederrheinauswahl under coach Gerd Bode. Via the youth sections of MSV Duisburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach, Mitroglou got his first professional contract at the age of 19 with Olympiakos Piraeus. He played there for seven and a half years. However, with loan breaks, he spent one season playing for Athens first division rivals Panionios and Atromitos. With Piraeus, Mitroglou was Greek champion five times and cup winner four times.
Twice champion with Benfica Lisbon in Portugal In January 2014, it was off to Premier League side FC Fulham. However, Mitroglou did not warm up to the West Londoners and only made three appearances under coach Felix Magath, partly due to injury. Relegated to the second-tier Championship in the spring of 2014, Mitroglou was loaned to Olympiakos, then to Benfica Lisbon for two seasons, where he scored 36 goals in 60 games. In 2016 and 2017, he celebrated the Portuguese championship with Benfica.
In August 2017, he moved to France to join Olympique Marseille. His four seasons in Ligue 1, with just 33 appearances, were interspersed with a half-season on loan at Galatasaray Istanbul, where he was Turkish champion and cup winner, and the 2019/20 season on loan at PSV Eindhoven. With only five appearances in the 2021/22 season at Aris Thessaloniki, Mitroglou ended his professional career in early summer a year ago, during which he made 41 appearances in the Champions League, scoring 14 goals, as well as three games for Greece at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. His highest market value in February 2014 was a handsome twelve million euros.