Sara Däbritz, Niklas Stark, Julian Brandt and Benedikt Gimber have been named Young Players of the Year for 2014. The talented quartet will be awarded the gold Fritz Walter Medal in Essen on 7 September 2014.
The Medal is the second accolade in 48 hours for U-20 women’s international Däbritz, who helped Germany to their third FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup title in Canada on Sunday. Meanwhile, 1. FC Nürnberg’s Niklas Stark captained the U-19 team to victory with a 1-0 win over Portugal on 31 July at the European Championship in Hungary. Also part of that squad was Julian Brandt, who made his debut for Bayer Leverkusen at the age of 17 and has been a member of the club’s first-team squad ever since.
Benedikt Gimber was an integral part of the U-17 national team last season and became German champion with TSG 1899 Hoffenheim’s U-19 side.
A promising future
A successful career beckons for these young athletes. Many previous recipients of the Fritz Walter Medal have gone on to become top performers in the Bundesliga and even the senior national side. Eight former medal winners celebrated becoming World Cup champions in Rio de Janeiro this summer, including Mario Götze, scorer of the winning goal in the final, who received the medal named in honour of the captain of Germany’s “Miracle of Bern” winning side twice in 2009 and 2010. There are also seven Fritz Walter Medal recipients in the U-19 European Championship-winning squad. No fewer than 23 men’s internationals and 15 women’s internationals have featured among the 102 medal winners in the award’s ten-year history.
The accolades are endowed with €20,000 for the gold medal, €15,000 for a silver medal and €10,000 for the bronze, and the funds are designed to benefit the clubs that have trained the winning players. This year more than €100,000 was once again passed on to local sides as a result of the initiative.
The German Football Association (DFB) introduced the Fritz Walter Medal as a memorial to their honorary captain. Today’s aspiring young footballers continue to hold the 1954 World Cup winning skipper in the highest regard thanks to his impressive sporting performances and strength of character. Since 2004, the Medal has been awarded to the Young Players of the Year and has been conferred in association with the Fritz Walter Foundation since 2009.
Sara Däbritz, Niklas Stark, Julian Brandt and Benedikt Gimber have been named Young Players of the Year for 2014. The talented quartet will be awarded the gold Fritz Walter Medal in Essen on 7 September 2014.
The Medal is the second accolade in 48 hours for U-20 women’s international Däbritz, who helped Germany to their third FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup title in Canada on Sunday. Meanwhile, 1. FC Nürnberg’s Niklas Stark captained the U-19 team to victory with a 1-0 win over Portugal on 31 July at the European Championship in Hungary. Also part of that squad was Julian Brandt, who made his debut for Bayer Leverkusen at the age of 17 and has been a member of the club’s first-team squad ever since.
Benedikt Gimber was an integral part of the U-17 national team last season and became German champion with TSG 1899 Hoffenheim’s U-19 side.
A promising future
A successful career beckons for these young athletes. Many previous recipients of the Fritz Walter Medal have gone on to become top performers in the Bundesliga and even the senior national side. Eight former medal winners celebrated becoming World Cup champions in Rio de Janeiro this summer, including Mario Götze, scorer of the winning goal in the final, who received the medal named in honour of the captain of Germany’s “Miracle of Bern” winning side twice in 2009 and 2010. There are also seven Fritz Walter Medal recipients in the U-19 European Championship-winning squad. No fewer than 23 men’s internationals and 15 women’s internationals have featured among the 102 medal winners in the award’s ten-year history.
The accolades are endowed with €20,000 for the gold medal, €15,000 for a silver medal and €10,000 for the bronze, and the funds are designed to benefit the clubs that have trained the winning players. This year more than €100,000 was once again passed on to local sides as a result of the initiative.
The German Football Association (DFB) introduced the Fritz Walter Medal as a memorial to their honorary captain. Today’s aspiring young footballers continue to hold the 1954 World Cup winning skipper in the highest regard thanks to his impressive sporting performances and strength of character. Since 2004, the Medal has been awarded to the Young Players of the Year and has been conferred in association with the Fritz Walter Foundation since 2009.
