Young football stars and money: Ex-BVB favorite Sven Bender in clear words

“I am firmly convinced that Sven is an outstanding ambassador in terms of values.” These beautiful words come from Marco Kurz, Sven Bender’s first professional coach at 1860 Munich.

The now 34-year-old started his professional career with the Lions together with his twin brother Lars Bender – and is now working as a youth coach for the DFB.

In exclusive SPORTS1-Interview, Sven Bender talks about his work as assistant coach of the U16 juniors and the U17s before the World Cup final on Saturday against France (from 1 p.m. in SPORTS1-Liveticker), young professionals in today’s football business and his former clubs Borussia Dortmund and 1860 Munich.

SPORTS1: Mr. Bender, the U17s are currently causing a sensation at the World Cup in Indonesia and are in the final against France on Saturday. How do you view it?

Sven Bender: I’m totally thrilled and think it’s wonderful to see how the boys have grown together as a team and how much heart they play with! Even if an opponent seems superior in terms of play, people fight back and stick together. A completely new energy has emerged in the U17, a strength and conviction with which you can turn a game around. There’s a lot of heart and soul in it. This is a tight-knit bunch. The boys are rightly in the final. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they win the title.

SPORTS1: What makes the U17 boys so special?

Bender: Each one brings with them an incredible individual quality and a lot of talent. But they also have characteristics that belong to football. Everything is thrown in there and you see what can be achieved in football.

SPORTS1: Has this development become apparent at the U17 level?

Bender: We are not the U18s playing at the U17 World Cup*. We successfully completed the first qualifying round and you can tell that the boys gained a lot of international experience through the U16s last year and have gotten used to the higher international level. They have all taken a big step forward and we are confident. Many are already knocking on the door of their clubs at the U19 level, and we are looking forward to next year with the Algarve Cup or the European Championship qualifiers, where we want to qualify for the European Championships.

*Note d. Editor: the U17 team, which became European champions in the summer and is now taking part in the tournament, is officially already the U18 team. The U16, which was recently promoted to the U17 youth team, is coached by Sven Bender and is working towards future tournaments.

SPORTS1: In June 2022, the German Football Association appointed you as the new assistant coach of the then U16 national team. What were the first steps in your coaching job like back then?

Bender: Totally unusual. From the beginning, I was very grateful for this opportunity to get a different perspective. I only ever knew the player’s point of view. It was nice to get a different perspective on football and start this path in the youth sector because I knew it from back then, even if it was 20 years ago. An incredible amount has happened, everything has become more professional. The beginning wasn’t easy because I was still thinking like a professional. I had to step back a bit to assess what I could pass on to the boys. It was also partly unfair because I expected too much at one point or another.

SPORTS1: What can you give the young players?

Bender: Above all, it’s about values. One thing was always important for Lars and me: to give a lot. If you give a lot, you may get something in return in life. However, if I don’t give anything and expect a lot from football, I won’t get anything in return. For us it was always: Use every opportunity to get better. Then you always take one step further. In the end, I am very grateful for it, as is Lars. We have given a lot in our careers, but we have also received a lot. I’ll give that to the boys. You should use every training session and just give nothing away. You are allowed to make mistakes, but mistakes made out of passion can be forgiven. With will, passion and willingness you can achieve a lot.

SPORTS1: What is most important on the way to becoming a professional these days?

Bender: Unfortunately something was lost, but it depends on the attitude towards the job. This begins in the youth training centers. It’s about really wanting to achieve your goal of becoming a professional footballer and giving everything to achieve it. Players used to not care what the pitch was like or who was on the sidelines criticizing you. Instead, it was about getting to the top. At that time, the players hadn’t yet dealt so intensively with what the other person could give you so that I could get to the top. Everyone who works in football and develops players would like to get all of their boys to the top. The attitude of the players is crucial. If you succeed, it has a lot to do with your own attitude.

SPORTS1: Is it too easy these days to just look at money, clothes and expensive cars? Talented people often have their heads twisted with huge sums of money and some people even have two advisors.

Bender: There’s a lot of money involved in football. The question is how to deal with it. I don’t want to blame anyone, but it’s extremely difficult for young players to deal with it so quickly. I’m so grateful that my career has taken small steps when it comes to finances. My salary has always matched my development. That really grounded me. I was able to grow little by little as a result.

SPORTS1: Do you have a concrete example?

Bender: For us, only the Bundesliga and the stars who held up trophies or the championship trophy at the end were visible to us. That was our vision of what we wanted to achieve. Of course, it was already said back then that we could live well financially. But for us, this financial appeal was linked to winning titles as a player. We hardly had any other impressions. Today the boys see on social media that some professionals fly on private jets, for example. Your image of the professional footballer is very different to the vision we used to have. That’s why the environment is so important to stay clear.

SPORTS1: You yourself are part of this as a U16 coach. Your younger national team tested twice against Turkey at the end of 2023. In Antalya, the team born in 2007 achieved a 1-1 and a 4-3 win. How do you rate the two performances?

Sven Bender: With mixed feelings. In terms of the results it was okay, but in terms of the games we can’t be completely satisfied. We could have made a lot of things easier for ourselves in the second game because we had a lot of chances in the early stages. We made life a little difficult for ourselves. But we had a lot of new players compared to our qualifying round and some of them hadn’t been with us for a while. But everyone should have the chance to show themselves again. It was very enlightening. We wanted to bring the boys closer to the international level.

SPORTS1: The international level at which they played long enough. How do you look back on your professional career?

Bender: There were one or two titles with BVB, but I don’t want to limit my career to just that. I was able to experience wonderful moments – on and off the pitch. My goal was to, all these years (15 years as a professional, Anm. d. Red.) to give everything on the pitch. I managed that quite well. I can look contentedly in the mirror. I always played football with heart and was never satisfied during my career. After my last game I was really satisfied for the first time.

SPORTS1: You and Lars deliberately ended your career relatively early and went together to play amateur sports at a football club in your home country. But now you are back in professional football. When did a rethink take place?

Bender: I just needed some distance from professional football, Lars too. We needed to ground ourselves again. Football is such a fast-paced business and we needed to escape that. The year at home was good for us because we were born with a footballer’s heart. We then asked ourselves the question of whether or not to turn our backs on football completely and then came to the conclusion that it would be good for us if we continued to play professional football. We always stood for certain values ​​and wanted to help ensure that these values ​​are not lost. We want to pass something on to the younger generation.

SPORTS1: Many of the values ​​and achievements mentioned are also something we would like to see from the senior national team, but why can’t that happen?

Bender: You can’t compare the youth sector with the professional sector. What I can say, however, is that I am very confident about the home European Championships next year. The boys still have time and the team will find itself under Julian Nagelsmann. I also hope that the home European Championships will create a dynamic and the team will develop its own euphoria. A similar level of enthusiasm as in 2006 would be great. The closer the tournament gets, the more energy is released.