Bayern Munich may be the defending champions of the Bundesliga, but they spent the winter break mulling over the fact that they find themselves sitting third at the midway point this season.
The unfamiliar challengers of Borussia Mönchengladbach and RB Leipzig top the league table but 14 sides sit above Bayern Munich when ranking the teams based on average age. The Bavarian behemoths’ starting XI have an average age of 26.6, with seven of the first team squad the wrong side of 30.
The 19-year-old Alphonso Davies not only brings this average down, but shows that there is a path to the first team for the younger members of the squad to follow.
Here are four players who could break into the first 11 this year.
Joshua Zirkzee (Striker)
Bayern Munich may boast the best striker in European football, but Robert Lewandowski, try as he might, cannot play every minute of every game. So far, Joshua Zirkzee has proven to be more than an adequate replacement for their first-choice number nine.
At 18 years old, Zirkzee is a towering 6’4 tall but is yet to fill out. The Dutchman joined Bayern’s youth team from Feyenoord’s equivalent in 2017, but has just started to make an impression on the first team in the limited time he was afforded in December.
Despite being yet to register a goal in the third tier of German football (with Bayern’s second team) Zirkzee has two goals in the seven minutes of Bundesliga action he’s seen. Should he continue at even a fraction of this rate then the young forward may trouble Lewandowski for a starting role in the future.
Michaël Cuisance (Central Midfielder)
Michaël Cuisance was just 17 when he first moved to Borussia Mönchengladbach from French side Nancy in 2017.
He went on to play 24 Bundesliga matches in 2017/18, starting nine and chipping in with two goals and as many assists. As well as becoming Gladbach’s youngest ever player to start a Bundesliga game, aged 18 years and 45 days, the 5’9 Frenchman was also voted the fans’ Player of the Season.
Despite this debut season promise, Cuisance was restricted to just one start last season before he joined a long list of his compatriots to have signed for Bayern in the past few seasons, with the champions securing his services for a little over £10m last summer.
The 20-year-old plays in a withdrawn midfield role and given his propensity to favour his left foot, comparisons to Mesut Özil have been made.
Only 30 minutes of first-team football have fallen Cuisance’s way this season, but given his promise and performance at Gladbach more appearances are surely a question of when not if.
Jann-Fiete Arp (Striker)
Jann-Fiete Arp was another young talent brought to Bavaria last summer as Bayern look to reduce their dependence on ageing players. The 6’0 front man made his name at Hamburg, a club he had been a part of and scored for since the age of ten.
After pillaging German football’s formative leagues, Arp was promoted to the first team in the 2017/18 campaign. That season he became the first player born in the 21st century to score in the German top flight.
Following Hamburg’s relegation in 2018, Arp stayed with his boyhood club but was only granted five starts in the second tier, scoring once and assisting as many.
Despite the limited opportunities he was given, Bayern had seen enough to part ways with a little less than £3m for the Germany Under-21 international. Injury has blighted the first half of Arp’s season but given the scoring record this young man has at a number of levels, it seems like a matter of time before he breaks through to the first team.
Sarpreet Singh (Attacking Midfielder)
Sarpreet Singh’s move from Wellington Phoenix to Bayern Munich this summer may represent the biggest transfer in New Zealand football history.
The 5’7 playmaker is reported to have first come onto Bayern’s radar when he played against one of the club’s youth teams on a tour of Europe, aged just 11. Nine years on and Singh finds himself playing first team football for the German champions, albeit only eight minutes so far.
He may have gone into the winter break with a red card suspension for Bayern’s second team, but it looks like discipline and injury are the only things that have a chance of preventing Singh from establishing himself in Bayern’s squad over the course of 2020.
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