interview
Football
Game advisor Volker Struth: “Without a certain audacity, I wouldn’t be where I am today”
Here he kicked balls between the washing bars as a child: game advisor Volker Struth in Cologne-Pulheim
Volker Struth is considered one of the most influential game consultants in football. He works with Niklas Süle, Timo Werner and Toni Kroos, among others. With the star he talked about the bad image of his job, about suitcases full of money and displayed decadence. And how often Uli Hoeneß yelled at him.
It was Reiner Calmund who once advised Volker Struth to become a player’s agent: “He said he had already met a lot of agents. But with my qualities – speaking, selling, doing – I was exactly the right man for it.” Back then, in the summer of 2007, Struth was working as an entrepreneur, selling office supplies, Germany scarves and organizing folk festivals. Within four years he became Germany’s most successful game consultant.
“Without a certain audacity, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” says Struth in an interview with him star. He traces his ambition back to his precarious childhood in Pulheim near Cologne: “I wanted to get out of this life.” He gave everything for that. However, he says: “I still can’t stop being yelled at.” Basically, he doesn’t think screaming is a good way to get there, says Struth. He had the most violent row as a game advisor with Michael Zorc: “When I told him that we would pull the clause and Götze would go. He threw everything at me at my head. There were words in it …”
“A wrong picture is being painted from the outside”
Struth vehemently defends himself against accusations that game consultants like himself are the black sheep of the football world: “My job is first of all that my players play football at the right time in the right place.” The clubs shouldn’t be underestimated either: “They usually already know very well what they’re doing. They paint the wrong picture from the outside.”
About his relationship with Mario Götze, Struth tells how he was deeply affected by his departure from his agency: “It always hurts me to leave. After Mario Götze and I separated, I was put in a corner for two weeks. The boy was been part of my life! ” On the other hand, he is repulsed by the wealth shown by footballers: “Decadence makes me throw up.”
With his success, Struth explains why he has such a bad image even among player agents: “You don’t make friends with it, they say a lot of crap about me.” But he doesn’t put suitcases with money on the table in advance, neither with very young talents nor with parents of footballers: “It won’t happen with me.”