Every club in the world is searching for the next Julian Nagelsmann. The hunt is always on for the next coaching prodigy, the young mind that can take whatever failures they endured on the field to fuel them to become geniuses on the touchline.
St. Pauli have found their hidden gem. His name is Fabian Hurzeler, and he was born in America. His country of birth, though, is only a small piece of Hurzeler's story, which is only just getting started. However, the man himself admits that his American heritage has played its part in his success.
And Hurzeler has had plenty of success so far. He's just 31 years old and has St. Pauli storming towards the Bundesliga. To put that into perspective, Hurzeler is three years younger than Thomas Muller and Toni Kroos. He's the same age as Antonio Rudiger and Marc-Andre Ter Stegen. He was teammates with Emre Can as a youth player at Bayern Munich. To have climbed this high this fast at this age? There's something special about him.
Hurzeler has heard the comparisons and seen his name next to ones like Nagelsmann and, of course, he's flattered. Hurzeler, though, knows that all of this is just getting started. He's a coaching prodigy right now, but he has bigger aspirations than that.
"I have to stay humble," he says. "I have to go on my own way. I still have a lot of things to learn. It's not only about detecting things on the pitch; it's also how you treat the media. It's how your impact is in the media and in the world. It's very important that I go on my own, that I try to reflect on my own, and that I go my own way because I can't be the same as Julian Nagelsmann. He went one way, but I'm trying to go the Fabian Hurzeler way. If I can be as successful as Nagelsmann, I will be happy."