{"id":1352,"date":"2018-02-05T11:31:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T10:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfbayern.com\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2018-02-05T11:31:30","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T10:31:30","slug":"behind-the-scenes-appointment-with-niklas-suele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/behind-the-scenes-appointment-with-niklas-suele\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the scenes: Appointment with Niklas S\u00fcle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Niklas S\u00fcle is a massive unit or maybe better still a bear of a man. When I watch S\u00fcle playing, he always reminds me of Balu from Jungle Book who always reaches his goals with \u201cbear necessities.\u201d The only difference is that \u201cBalu S\u00fcle\u201d is faster, much faster, but both are huge. At the Confed Cup in Russia I got to know him for the first time and straight from the start we hit it off. At our first meeting, the 21-year-old Sule admitted that he probably ate too many hamburgers and pizza while on holiday. But that\u2019s the way it is: \u201cI am a bon vivant,\u201d he said. You rarely hear such honest words from a young professional these days.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

S\u00fcle is just wearing a t-shirt when he comes in to a cold interview room. All the other rooms are busy and the backup rooms aren\u2019t heated at all. \u201cDon\u2019t you want to put on a jacket? We don\u2019t want you to catch a cold\u201d, I ask before adding: \u201cDon\u2019t worry, our questions will soon heat up the room.\u201d To be honest, I am quite worried that the defender will start sniffing \u2013 but Niklas soon wipes away my worries. When I see him in the t-shirt a\u00a0question comes up which I have wanted to ask him since the Confed Cup last summer.\u00a0At the team HQ a photographer took a picture when S\u00fcle was topless. Even his team colleagues\u00a0smiled when they saw the picture and his little pot belly. I ask him if he has seen the picture yet? If yes, does he like it?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

S\u00fcle could get mad but he laughs. Of course, he has seen the picture. A lot of people have sent it. If it would upset him he would have worn a t-shirt, he says. He still doesn\u2019t have a six-pack stomach and is never going to have a body like Robert Lewandowski. S\u00fcle makes it clear that no one in the dressing room calls him “fatty\u201d and as long as this is the case he is not worried about it. \u201cI\u00a0think my body is okay,\u201d he says relaxed. His weight is officially 97 kg he\u2019s a strong guy. We interrupt the interview topic and start talking about his physique.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He knows that he isn\u2019t Usain Bolt, but he is sure that he is fast. Aged 10, he trained in the athletics team on the 50m sprint. Like every talented youngster he had to decide and of course he chose football. And again, at the start of his career it was his physique that everybody noticed.\u00a0\u201cI was 1.88 meters tall when I played in the U15 and when I was\u00a0in the U19, I was 1.93m tall\u201d, S\u00fcle said, who is now 1.95 meters tall. In most cases, S\u00fcle was physically superior over his opponents. That\u2019s why many people said: \u201cNow, he is better, but he is only better because he bigger! Someday, this will not be enough! \u201cThis is what he had to hear during his entire youth career. \u201cI am happy to prove all of those people wrong,\u201c S\u00fcle says with satisfaction.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a similarity between Lewandowski and S\u00fcle, which has nothing to do with the six-pack stomach. As a youngster, S\u00fcle played as a striker for a long time. Coach Xaver Zembrod turned S\u00fcle into a defender at Hoffenheim. \u201cI was playing in the U15, but he took me to the U17. It didn\u2019t matter which position I played, it was just something special to be part of the U17 squad\u201c, S\u00fcle recalls. From that moment on, he played only a defender. \u201cLuckily! I don\u2019t know if I would be as good as Lewy, so I think it\u2019s better that I became a defender.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember he was even leading the scoring charts against Lewandowski after scoring his head on matchday one. \u201cLewy\u201d caught up by scoring a penalty 44 minutes later, but in size and weight \u201cBalu S\u00fcle\u201c is leading the way.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Niklas S\u00fcle is a massive unit or maybe better still a bear of a man. When I watch S\u00fcle playing, he always reminds me of Balu from Jungle Book who always reaches his goals with \u201cbear necessities.\u201d The only difference is that \u201cBalu S\u00fcle\u201d is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfbayern.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}