When Brenden Aaronson woke up on Wednesday, the third day of training at 1. FC Union Berlin in Bramberg (Austria), one of the first things he looked at on his cell phone was the sporting events of the night. Inter Miami had played, won 4-0 against Atlanta United. A little while ago, the American would have paid no more than casual attention to the result. But not since Lionel Messi played in Miami. Probably the best footballer of that time had scored two goals himself and prepared another one. Aaronson smiled contentedly.
“He was always my idol. I watched videos of him from morning to night,” Aaronson told the Berliner Zeitung in an exclusive interview. If time allows, with the Bundesliga free of play, the 22-year-old wants to see Messi play at the stadium in the United States. His big role model in his home country – for Brenden Aaronson it is the epitome of football romance.
Otherwise, he doesn’t have much time to deal with Messi or other things. A little over two weeks ago he joined the Köpenick squad. He’s still brand new, but already feels very well integrated: “I can’t thank the whole club and my teammates enough for welcoming me into the group. They all try to support me, especially Susi (Susanne Kopplin, team manager of 1. FC Union Berlin), who helped me to find an apartment.
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He will move into his new center of life in the days after his return from Austria. The furniture is still missing and so is his partner, who is coming to the capital with him. And then it can actually only get better than before.
The midfielder was relegated from the Premier League with Leeds United two months ago, and Aaronson was only used as a wild card in the end. “It got difficult after the World Cup. We were less and less successful as a team and then it became more difficult for me personally,” he says, looking back on his time in England.
With his ex-club, from which he has now been loaned to Germany for a year, he was in the middle of the table for a long time. Leeds suddenly only got two points from the last nine games – and fell into second division.
Nils Malzahn (l.), Lead Sports Editor of the Berliner Zeitung, met Union newcomer Brenden Aaronson in the Köpenicker.Matthias Koch training camp
It had started so well on the island in the summer of last year. Aaronson had switched from Red Bull Salzburg to the strongest league in the world for 32 million euros and was a regular at Leeds right away. He scored his first goal in a furious 3-0 win against Chelsea and was one of the strongest players on the pitch in the 2-1 away win at Liverpool. “In the first six months I probably played the best football of my career, I was self-confident and felt good,” recalls the new creative player of the Iron.
It is precisely this phase that he now wants to continue at Union. In one of the two eight positions in coach Urs Fischer’s system, his creativity, his agility and the ability to stage his teammates are in demand. And not just in the Bundesliga and the DFB Cup, but also in the Champions League. In contrast to 1. FC Union Berlin, he was already part of the premier class himself.
In the season before last he prevailed with Salzburg in a group with OSC Lille, VfL Wolfsburg and FC Sevilla and convincingly made it into the round of 16. FC Bayern was then the final stop there in the first and second leg. “We were the underdogs and still qualified for the round of 16. We went out on the pitch together as a team, weren’t afraid and then a lot can always happen in football,” says Aaronson and now wants to exemplify exactly this mentality in Köpenick. “The Champions League,” he emphasizes, “is not too big for Union.”
Read tomorrow in the second part who advised Brenden Aaronson to move to the Bundesliga, which player made a lasting impression on him in the Premier League and which quality in his game he would like to explicitly improve.
2023-07-27 19:27:57
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