Faster than you can say “Freddy Adu,” Julian Green is on the move again.
The 22-year-old former Bayern München prospect has been loaned from his parent club—Stuttgart, in their first year back in the Bundesliga—back down to the second division with something called Greuther Fürth. It has been a precipitous drop from the bench of Bayern and scoring in the World Cup to now, being offloaded on loan once again to the lower divisions of Germany, in his long search for somewhere he can actually play.
Trying to pronounce the club’s name is pretty much the only fun thing about Greuther Fürth. They play in the second division of Germany and have yet to tally a single point in the first four games of the 2. Bundesliga season. Perhaps understandably, chairman Helmut Hack just fired the manager this week, leaving Mirko Dickhaut in charge for the time being.
For USMNT fans still hoping that Green can become at least a decent European player, there is arguably one silver lining here: There’s really nowhere to go but up, for both Green and his new side. Greuther Fürth will already be Green’s fourth German club of his career, and he has never made more than ten first-team appearances at any of them. In announcing his move, Green expressed hopes that this would be his shot at regular playing time:
A penny for Landon Donovan’s thoughts right now.