There’s plenty of clubs in world football who regret letting players go as youngsters, and for Borussia Monchengladbach, that player is Southampton’s Armel Bella-Kotchap.
The centre-back has been starring for the Saints this season since an €11m move from VfL Bochum in the summer, making 16 appearances in the Premier League and earning a surprise call up to Hansi Flick’s World Cup squad, where he spent all three games on the bench.
Despite that, he is considered a star of the future for the German national side and Southampton alike and that’s causing some sadness at Gladbach.
BILD explains that in 2015, when Bella-Kotchap was 13-years-old he was ‘sent away’ by the German club after joining their D-youth team aged ten in 2012.
They believed he had a ‘lack of prospects’, something that was felt elsewhere as other professional clubs failed to ‘recognise his potential’ and sign him also. Thus, he moved to SG Unterrath in Düsseldorf.
From there he ‘fought his way back’, joining MSV Duisburg and then Bochum before his move to Southampton and eventual call up to Germany’s squad under Hansi Flick.
That did see Gladbach earn a ‘small compensation’ as one his training clubs, earning £27,500 from the €11m transfer fee.
That’s a pittance in reality, though, particularly as it is obvious that Gladbach ‘could really use’ the 21-year-old in their defence at this moment in time.
They’re instead ruing the fact that they ‘did not recognise his potential’ when they had him, with a bright future anticipated at Southampton and in the German national side for the young defender.
