🏟️ Kenan Yildiz entered Bayern Múnich’s academy at age 7. He spent 11 seasons there — more than half his life. And when the time came to choose a national team, Germany did not call him up. It did not even respond when his representatives knocked on the DFB’s door in October 2023.
So Yildiz made the decision on his own: Turkey. “They never believed in me”, declared the midfielder born in Regensburg in an interview with Corriere dello Sport. “At Bayern there was always someone ahead of me. I never truly felt supported.” Juventus signed him as a free agent in 2022 — with Barcelona also on the list — and from day one they gave him what he never had: trust. Today he is 20 years old, wears the club’s number 10 shirt, is the youngest captain in Juventus history, and has just been named the best under-23 player in all of Serie A in the 2025-26 season, with 10 goals and 6 assists in 33 matches. 🌟
But despite Turkey turning him into its star, not everything was positive for the footballer, since after a poor start with the national team that meant two defeats in the first two matches, the team lost any chance of advancing to the next round and was eliminated from the World Cup 😞🇹🇷
