Lennart Karl was always going to be on Bayern Munich’s radar. Born in Frammersbach, Bavaria, Karl went through two Bavarian clubs on his way to Eintracht Frankfurt’s youth academy, caught the eye with his outstanding performances, and even went viral online. Of course, Bavaria’s number-one team was going to be eager to sign him.
The question was, were his parents willing to see their child take the leap? “My parents weren’t so convinced, especially my mother,” Karl revealed in a recent interview with
DAZN (as captured by @iMiaSanMia ). “But from the very beginning, when Bayern Munich came up, I said I wanted to go there. When I first saw the campus, I just told myself, ‘I want to go there, I’m going to do it, I’m going to see this through.’ My parents weren’t exactly on my side. I had a few other offers. I said, ‘I’m going to do it.’ And then I moved out when I was 14 and went into boarding school.”
And how did Karl convince his parents to let him leave? “At the end of the day, it’s my decision. I said I wanted to go there, I wanted to play there,” Karl said bluntly (as captured by @iMiaSanMia ). “I’ve always been a Bayern fan, so I just said I wanted to do it. And then they said they’d take another look at it, and if I felt up to it, then I’d go to the boarding school and do it. That’s how it all started.“
Karl joined the Bayern academy at the beginning of 2022 and, considering his very young age, understandably struggled in his first 18 months. “I was a bit homesick for the first two weeks. I was wondering how it was all going to work out,” Karl admitted.
But the second year went incredibly well. “Then I got to know the boys at the boarding school, and things went pretty quickly,” Karl said. “When I was with the boys every day, playing football every day, it was a really, really cool time there.”
Karl would not only start for the U-17 and U-19 teams that season, but he would even make the bench for Bayern’s Champions League quarterfinal tie against Inter Milan, make his debut in the Club World Cup, and sign a huge new contract at the club. The rest, as they say, is history. Well, very recent history—but history nonetheless.
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