It hasn’t been an easy ride for keeper Daniel Peretz ever since he was signed by Bayern Munich from Maccabi Tel Aviv in the summer of 2023. He has also been on loan at Hamburg SV this season, where he has struggled
to get regular minutes behind keeper Daniel Heuer Fernandes, who is favored by manager Merlin Polzin. Essentially, the whole idea of Peretz’s loan spell with HSV has collapsed on itself as the whole point was for him to go somewhere with a more realistic opportunity of topflight minutes, something that was not as much of a possibility at Bayern after they bought Jonas Urbig from FC Köln last winter. At the time, Sven Ulreich was still out for personal reasons and Peretz was recovering from an injury, so Bayern needed to invest in ample cover for Manuel Neuer.
At HSV, Peretz has only made a total of two appearances, both of which came in the DFB-Pokal, the most recent of which having been their midweek loss to Holstein Kiel in penalties in the round of 16. At Bayern, he made a total if six appearances across all competitions last season before it was determined a loan spell elsewhere would be the best option for him. He had expressed a desire to stay at Bayern and fight for his place, but that was not ultimately found to be the best option by the club, thus the loan move to HSV — hindsight is always twenty/twenty.
Despite his struggles for starting minutes in the Bundesliga, Peretz recently explained how much he has enjoyed the experience of being able to train and work alongside Neuer at Bayern. “I learned a lot from him because he’s the greatest goalkeeper of all time, who changed the goalkeeping game. Even before I went to Bayern, I had watched many videos of him: his saves, his passes. And then I got to know him personally, train with him, which helped me a lot. His mental strength and professionalism are also fascinating. Of course, you can’t copy Manu, but you can learn a lot from him. I look up to him,” the Israeli international explained to SportBild (via @iMiaSanMia).
Regardless of what winds up happening in the short- and long-term future for Peretz, the chance to have worked alongside one of the world’s greatest ever keepers is something he very much cherishes and will have learned a great deal from. There’s a possibility he could wind up terminating his HSV loan this winter as he went there to be a starter, but that still remains to be up in the air. He wants to be a starter somewhere, but finding the right place is the key and easier said than done.
