The £3m rated Rapid Vienna wide man was hailed a sa huge prospect when he was coming through the ranks with Euro big guns
Nicolas Kuhn has a CV featuring some of the biggest clubs on the continent. The Celtic target is also in not bad company.
The 24-year-old Rapid Vienna wide man was rated as one of Germany’s great prospects not so long ago, winning the prestigious Fritz Walter Medal for young players, a gong that also sits on the mantelpieces of stars such as Kai Havertz, Mario Gotze, Timo Werner and Julian Brandt. And it’s not just in Scotland where folk can get a bit carried away by youngsters on the cusp of breaking through.
The Germans can get a bit excited as well and some rather giddy observers spotted Kuhn as a kid at RB Leipzig and declared him as the next Lionel Messi. So he might have something in common with Ryan Gauld as well. But it’s clear Kuhn had a sky high rating as a kid. His performances for Leipzig earned him a move to Ajax, where he was recruited by his hero Marc Overmars and played for the youth and second team under former Motherwell hero and now Man Utd no.2 Mitchell van der Gaag and Dutch legend Michael Reiziger.
From there he was picked up by Bayern Munich after his former RB coach Michael Baum pitched up in Bavaria and despite now managing to make the breakthrough into the first team, it was still a minor surprise when he headed to Rapid for just £500,000 in the summer of 2022.
Reiziger raved about the kid when he was at Ajax and then boss Erik ten Hag was also an admirer. Reiziger said: “He is a great talent with fantastic technique. He is a very explosive player who can also score very easily He is technically gifted, intuitive, has a fast dribble, is explosive in the first metres, goal-oriented, sees the game and is eager. It’s wonderful to work with players who you only have to slow down. We brought him in because he can add something extra with his talent, and he did that.”
It was Baum who had a major say in a couple of Kuhn’s early moves and he believes the youngster has the lot. He said: “He is very intelligent, technically gifted, creative, goal-scoring and, above all, incredibly fast with the ball. With his left foot, Kuhn can do a lot – maybe even everything.”
Rapid had high hopes for the wide man and will be reluctant to sell. But the Austrian big guns have got themselves in financial bother in recent times and are toiling in midtable in the Bundesliga. They can’t really afford to be sniffy when Celtic come calling with a cheque of more than £3m. Rapid will have wanted to keep hold of him longer to make more dosh, but needs must.
They were gushing when the youngster was secured 18 months ago. Rapid sporting director Zoran Barisic said: “He is an absolute dream player for us, one who has been on our radar for a very long time and who we have been looking out for very intensively, since very early on. Together with sports coordinator Steffen Hofmann and head scout Mathias Ringler, we also got a live impression of him in the stadium this season. His dynamism and technical skills will liven up our offensive game and make it more versatile and variable.
“We have presented Nicolas with a clear plan of how the club’s chosen path should look in the future. We are all the more proud that he can identify 100 percent with this challenge, and that he himself also sees SK Rapid as his best possible next career step.”
Boli Bolingoli (Image: SNS Group)
The next step now looks like Celtic. It’s fair to say the response from some Hoops fans has been fairly lukewarm. And not just because of the last signing who landed from Rapid Vienna. They’d rather forget Boli Bolingoli, but the reluctance to go overboard about the next cab off the Vienna rank has nothing to do with the infamous covid country skipper.
It the fact it is another £3m wide man with bags of potential. In his first spell, Brendan Rodgers famously said he had a million wingers when Maryan Shved arrived to make it a million-and-one. He’s not far off it again now. Yet – perhaps like back in 2019 – it’s more of a question of quality rather than quantity.
The likes of Marco Tilio and Yang don’t look first team ready and could be farmed out on loan in the coming weeks. Mikey Johnston has shown flashes but time is ticking. Liel Abada is back from injury but there were noises about him leaving in the summer and the political issues surrounding his homeland in Israel might have made life pretty awkward.
No wonder some fans are putting two and two together with the Kuhn move. Folk who have seen him in Austria suggest the German is a left footer who plays on the right wing.
He likes to cut inside but has the pace to get beyond defenders on the outside. There’s variation to his game and while he has tended to hog the right touchline, he can play on the other side, or even as a no.10. Kuhn hasn’t quite lived up to the top billing he received as a kid but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t fit the bill for Celts.
