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In professional soccer, stability is rare. Players come and go, transfers are constantly rumored and executed, and careers are unpredictable.
Julian Green understands this better than most. A decade ago, he was a rising star for the U.S. men's national team, having just scored a knockout goal against Belgium with his very first touch in a World Cup match. This came after just one brief appearance in the Champions League with Bayern Munich. The sky seemed to be the limit for him, poised to climb the ladder of success—whether at his club or elsewhere.
Instead, Green has planted down roots. After four years in the wilderness after that World Cup goal, those roots took hold at Greuther Furth. Now, in his eighth season with the club, he admits that it wasn't always what he had in mind.
"I would say in the beginning, I never thought that I would be here for so long, to be honest," Green admits. "But yeah, in the end, you can never really plan things."
Green, ultimately, learned the importance of finding a home. Furth provided that, giving him a club that believed in him in a way that his previous stops didn't. Ten years after showing promise as a potential attacking young star of American soccer, he's now a deeper-lying veteran for Furth, one anchoring the club's push for promotion in the 2. Bundesliga.
It's a role he's comfortable with. Green doesn't feel pressure, and he says he never really has. If he can get through the things he has so far, being a leader should come easy.
"I don't think it was a big pressure," Green says, reflecting on 2014. "I think I scored that goal and, of course, after that, I see all the news and everything that has been written about me, but it's hard to say. I think for me, after the World Cup, it wasn't that easy because, in my opinion, I played for the best club in the world at that time [Bayern Munich], probably with the best squad they ever had, so I made my move to Hamburg. It didn't really work out."
He added, "It's always individual. It's hard to give advice to other players because every career is different, and every step is different. So you can't really say 'You have to do this, you have to do that'. At the end, you have to work hard. That's what you always have to do, but then there are a lot of things that can go in this or in the other direction."