Marc-André ter Stegen can win the Champions League – SPIEGEL ONLINE

For Gladbach the season two weeks ago, the players are in the sun, the club bosses take care of a couple of transfers, the Greenkeeper has time to take care of the stadium turf. But when that night in Berlin the final of the Champions League (20.45 clock, live ticker SPIEGEL ONLINE; TV: ZDF) will kick off, a lot is also available for Borussia at stake: Recovers the FC Barcelona against Juventus, which is quite possible, wins also Mönchengladbach.

For in Marc-André ter Stegen then there’s the only German in the square; Barcelona goalkeeper somehow also still Gladbach. The Bundesliga club gets even some of the possible prize money of the Catalans, it is in the contract, the ter Stegen, 23, has signed with Barça. “I find that, if successful, everyone should benefit from it, which has somehow helped,” says the sports director of Borussia, Max Eberl.

How do you get a lot of the club, he does not reveal, but really that does not matter. It’s Eberl and Gladbach less about money than about the feeling to be part of this great evening of football. A little bit at least. “It may sound a father, but we are all very proud of Marc,” says Eberl. He and the goalkeeper is currently perhaps the best club team in the world known each other since the end of 2004, as Eberl took over the youth coordinator of Borussia.

In all youth teams Gladbach

Actually everything making up ter Stegen as a human being and footballer, he had learned in Mönchengladbach, says Eberl. There ter Stegen was born in 1992, where he was the first time in the stadium, where he started four years his own career. He went through all the youth teams of the “Foals” and was not even 19, when then-coach Lucien Favre let him play for the first time in the Bundesliga. Ter Stegen was pretty fast pretty good, it only took a little over two years before the FC Barcelona wanted him.

His goalkeeping coach and mentor Uwe Kamps had suspected something, for him, Eberl and the player was the beginning of 2014 a difficult time. He had every time almost cried when he thought of a possible change, admitted ter Stegen. But because ter Stegen is a überehrgeiziger young athlete, he also knew that he had to leave his nest Gladbach to move forward. So Barcelona, ​​this city on the Mediterranean, in the Spanish language is frowned upon, in which one spends the evenings on the beach and the largest football festivals in the Camp Nou. A counter-proposal to Mönchengladbach.

Such culture shock should help sometimes to grow in them, perhaps beyond itself. But at ter Stegen looked much initially from after retrogression. Only the club engaged in the summer the Chilean goalkeeper Claudio Bravo after its fulminant performance at the World Cup, then ter Stegen was injured from. Ter Stegen had been a desire of players Gerardo Martino and Andoni Zubizarreta, but both the coach and the sports director had already left the club when he came. The new coach Luis Enrique wanted an experienced keeper, one as the 32-year-old Bravo, who knew the Spanish league. Ter Stegen was so not only his injury, but also the club policy to the victim.

harsh criticism of the Spanish press

Luis Enrique could be at least one on a deal: Bravo should in La Liga in goal, ter Stegen in cup and Champions League. Ter Stegen had so few opportunities to convince the coach and the Spanish press by himself. When he then in the group stage of the Champions League afforded an error against Paris Saint-Germain, cursing the journalists to Barcelona: How can you buy as a goalkeeper and then let him play yet? A German who only cost twelve million euros and was not present at the World Cup in Brazil?

“Of course I was the hit,” said ter Stegen magazine “11 Friends”. He asked himself, “why journalists write that. In the meantime, I can understand it.” Ter Stegen needed a little to cope with the Spanish football culture that knows only black or white. He learned how to deal with it, as he learned to concentrate on his beloved little part time job in the gate. The situation is not good, he said in several interviews, “Of course I want to make all the games”.

But because he was a “down to earth, conscientious and single-minded guy,” he had added to Eberl says of his protégé: “He has invested all his strength in these games.” It was worth it. The fifth and the youngest German goalkeeper can ter Stegen win the Champions League, he has been the Spanish Cup. But, and this is much more important: Ter Stegen has recommended for more, it is quite possible that he will come in the coming season in the League to use.

For Luis Enrique like at the beginning of this season, in which it initially focused on the stabilization and then only to the development of the Barça football, the experience of Claudio Bravo have given the preference. But the coach has noticed that the play of his team benefited from the game ter Stegen. The FC Barcelona was always trying to be one step ahead of the competition, it worked even better and sometimes worse in the past. Under Luis Enrique just be seen again – which would be more suitable than a goalkeeper, who is already in the future?

ter Stegen’s style was written much, that he was originally fielder and has for a goalkeeper exceptional ball skills, the passing and in the opening game. His former coach Kamps said the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung”, “more than any other goalkeeper in the world” is so strong with both feet, and Lionel Messi claiming ter Stegen play the ball “much better” than himself.

Okay, that was a joke. But he wins this evening for the fourth time the Champions League, then also because this German goalkeeper, who is not even a world champion.