Niklas Süle: the road to retirement from Hoffenheim to Borussia Dortmund via Bayern Munich
Niklas Süle has announced he will retire from professional football at the end of the season – we look back at the career of the Hoffenheim, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Germany international centre-back.
Frankfurt born, Süle joined local football club Rot-Weiß Walldorf aged 10, before catching the eye of Eintracht Frankfurt. They no doubt regret the decision to allow him to leave three years later for Darmstadt from where he swiftly moved to Hoffenheim’s youth academy at the start of 2010.
By the 2012/13 season and aged just 16, he was already in the club’s second team and training with the first. On 11 May 2013, coach Markus Gisdol put him in the starting XI for the 4-1 loss at home to Hamburg for the first of his 299 Bundesliga appearances after Süle had stood out, though not necessarily only because of his hulking 6’4” physique.
“He’s a real talent,” said then Hoffenheim team manager Alexander Rosen after seeing Süle step up to become a first-team regular in 2013/14, making 25 Bundesliga appearances. “In recent months, he’s proven what a great attitude he already possesses aged 19.”
"Ultimately, (then Hoffenheim coach) Markus Gisdol is the one who discovered me,” Süle later said of the man who gave him his first-team debut. "He turned me into a professional and sometimes, through drastic measures, showed me how a professional has to behave.”
At times and despite Gisdol's best efforts, Süle’s attitude has been brought into question, no doubt due to his NFL-esque size and own admissions of a fondness for fast food. His enormous physical presence has also perhaps done Süle a disservice: he has the muscle of a nightclub bouncer, but not the menace. Impressively, he has never been suspended during his senior professional career.
“In every club I’ve been, I have always told them who I am. I told Dortmund at the time, ‘If you’re looking for a captain who shouts at everyone, that’s not me,’” explained Süle as he announced his retirement on the Spielmacher podcast. “Why did I work so well for so long at Bayern? Because others took on that role…During a game, I say absolutely nothing.”
Frequently, he didn’t need to. Süle admitted his agent once told him not to be so honest, but at Hoffenheim, his talent did the talking for him anyway.
Though the 2014/15 season was ruined by a first ACL rupture midway through, he returned to play 33 games as Hoffenheim avoided relegation in 2015/16. After helping Germany win Olympic silver – and scoring in the shoot-out defeat to Brazil in the final – he repeated that in 2016/17 when the Sinsheim outfit finished third under Julian Nagelsmann. Now 21 in summer 2017 and already having won the first of what would be 49 Germany caps a year earlier, Süle was undeniably one of the Bundesliga’s most sought-after talents, and Bayern were the ones seeking.
"I had good talks with the bosses at Bayern and Hoffenheim. Ultimately, I opted for Bayern as it's a once in a lifetime opportunity," said Süle, whose first big career move plunged him into competition for a place with Germany's 2014 World Cup winning centre-back partnership of Jerome Boateng and Mats Hummels. Not that he was fazed by the challenge: "I believe I'll fit in well and can learn a lot from the other central defenders there.”
Watch: The best of Süle at Bayern
He did. In fact, the student became the master as Süle frequently relegated one of his rivals to the bench. After 27 appearances – including 20 starts and a debut goal in victory over Bayer Leverkusen on the opening day – in his first season in Bavaria, he played 31 games in 2018/19 under Niko Kovač, a coach his career path would also cross when the pair reunited in Dortmund.
But just when he was established as a first-team first choice, eight games into the 2019/20 season a second ACL rupture brutally stopped him in his tracks. The COVID-19 pandemic meant he could return before the end of the extended campaign and he even featured in Bayern’s last four UEFA Champions League matches, replacing the injured Boateng 25 minutes into the final versus Paris Saint-Germain to help Hansi Flick’s squad to the club’s second treble.
He then played a further 48 times in the Bundesliga under Flick and Nagelsmann, totalling 114 games, five Bundesliga titles and two DFB Cups as well as the 2019/20 Champions League before surprising everyone in February 2022 by announcing he would be moving to Dortmund on a free transfer that summer having rejected a contract extension offer from Bayern.
"We're delighted that in Niklas we've been able to sign a Germany international on a free transfer and for four years," said then Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc in a statement on the club's official website.
Some 51 Bundesliga appearances across his first two seasons with the Yellow-Blacks boded well. But Süle’s injury troubles struck again in 2024/25 as he was limited to just 15 league games with more physical problems – and the scare of a third ACL rupture on Matchday 30 against Hoffenheim – convincing him to call time on his career when his BVB contract ends in summer 2026.
“What I felt when our doctor did the drawer test [used to check for a possible ligament tear] in the dressing room at Hoffenheim, when he looked at the physio and shook his head, and the physio did it too and didn’t feel any resistance either – I went into the shower and cried for 10 minutes. In that moment, I really thought it had torn,” Süle explained.
“When I went for the MRI the next day and got the good news [that it wasn’t a cruciate ligament tear], it was a thousand percent clear to me that it was over. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than actually looking forward to the time afterwards – being independent, going on holiday, spending time with my children – only to then have to come to terms with my third cruciate ligament tear.”
Though he may still get the one appearance he needs to reach 300 Bundesliga games, he will soon have to come to terms with being a former professional footballer. Süle, however, suggested he is comfortable bowing out having remained true to himself throughout.
“I have met thousands of players in my career and I think no one would stand up and say, ‘That Süle, he’s a t**t,’ I can’t imagine that,” he explained. “Because the human side has always been a lot more important for me than having played 30 games more. That’s important for me.”
