My Body Is My Capital, Isn’t It? The Field of Sports

Until recently, Austrian soccer had a “talent of the century”. Since being named “Player of the Tournament” at the Mercedes Benz Junior Cup in Germany in 2019, Yusuf Demir has become the plaything of big clubs such as Real Madrid. “Mini-Messi” (Niendorf, 2021) made his debut for Austria’s U17 national team shortly after his 15th birthday and also showed his great quality there (Mandl, 2019). Demir made his professional debut for Rapid Vienna at the age of 16 years, six months and 12 days, making him the youngest Bundesliga player in the club’s history (Vehren, 2024). At the age of 17, he moved to FC Barcelona on loan. If the Catalans had exercised the negotiated purchase option, which was actually a conditional purchase obligation, 10 million Euro would have flowed to Hütteldorf for the teenager. That’s a lot for a league in whose history only 33 players have fetched more than that amount (own research, Transfermarkt.at 2025). Initially, things even looked very promising: although he was actually brought in as a player for the second team, he apparently impressed so much that he even made it into the starting 11 of the senior team and scored a goal against VfB Stuttgart. Since then, things have gone steadily downhill: back to Rapid, then on to Galatasaray Istanbul, where he played just six games before being loaned out to Basel after one season, where he also made no more than brief appearances. Since his return to Turkey, he has a starting team appearance rate of 0% and 2% match minutes (as of 23.12.2024, transfermarkt.at). His market value has fallen from a maximum of 12 million to 2.2 million. So not a talent of the century after all? In a field where there is a great temptation to put the player at the centre of the career and career success—after all, the body is the greatest capital there, right?—it is easy to conclude that he is simply not as good as everyone thought.