At the age of 14, Said El Mala finished playing football.
It was the summer of 2021 and the teenager, who spent four years in Borussia Mönchengladbach’s youth academy with his older brother Malek, was told by the club’s development staff that he would not make the grade. El Mala was, they said, too small to thrive in the professional game. A youth journey that had begun at Linner SV, a club in the West German city of Krefeld where he was born and where his Lebanese father Mohammed once played, seemed over.
But thanks to the influence of Malek, who was also released but successfully convinced his brother that they should keep playing, if only for fun, it could have been a defining moment. Instead, it was just a traumatic staging post on what El Mala has called a “rocky road” to the game’s upper echelons.
“It was not easy to process,” remembers the light-footed left winger, who is now no less than 1.80 meters tall. “Just going from zero to 100. As a 14-year-old you ask yourself: ‘What did I do wrong?'”
A defining moment
As his career trajectory since confirms, El Mala’s only mistake was not filling out more quickly. After leaving Gladbach, he played a spell alongside his brother for TSV Meerbusch, an amateur side in the fifth tier of the German league system. Then, in March 2023, a truly defining moment came. El Mala sent a video of himself to Skillers, a Munich-based online platform that bills itself as “the voice of Generation Z” and is run by former German youth players.
A successful trial with Viktoria Köln of the German third tier followed, as did a rapid promotion from the under-19s to the senior squad and, in February 2024, a first professional contract. By then, both Said and Malek were attracting the interest of Köln, who made their move that summer and avoided a transfer ban prompted by the illegal signing of Slovenian teenager Jaka Cuber Potocnik by immediately loaning the brothers back to Viktoria Köln for the following campaign.
Now free to play for the club, El Mala has already made waves in the Bundesliga and was on the German bench at the Stade de Luxembourg in Gasperich on Friday evening, from where his first national senior call-up would have provided a good window into Nick Woltemade’s second half. If Pep Guardiola has his way, it may not be long before Premier League-bound El Mala links up with the Newcastle United striker.
Manchester City are among a host of top European clubs, including Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, to be linked with a move for the forward. For a player who only a few months ago plied his trade with Viktoria Köln of the German third tier, it has been a meteoric rise; maybe even a little too fast.
‘He is modest and brutal at the same time’
El Mala, whose first ten games in the Bundesliga already yielded four goals and two assists, remained an unused substitute in the World Cup qualifier on Friday evening. He was subsequently sent back to the under-21s by Nagelsmann, although that was neither a reflection on his character nor his ability. The Germany boss said the newcomer “made a good impression” and left open the possibility El Mala could play a starring role at next summer’s World Cup.
“Said did well,” Nagelsmann said. “You always have to put things in perspective because it was his first time with us and he hasn’t had much training time here. He’s modest and cheeky at the same time.”
“He must become a regular starter in Cologne and have the ambition to address the areas for improvement that his club coach and I have indicated. Then he will also have the opportunity to make an impact with the national team.”
A similar warning was issued last month by an unnamed agent of the player, who told Cologne newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that the hype surrounding a possible move was way off the mark.
“Current reports that the players’ agents are meeting with Dortmund, Bayern or clubs from England are incorrect,” the source said. “As things stand now, there is absolutely no reason to leave 1. FC Köln – neither this winter nor next summer.
‘We consciously hold the reins together’
“There is nothing at the moment that will stop Said from playing for Köln next season, especially because the club is developing very positively. Everyone knows that if Said continues to develop at this pace, Said will eventually take the next step. But he is not going anywhere in the near future; he will remain at FC Köln. We are consciously keeping the reins together.”
That is a laudable ambition, but it can also be a hopeless ambition. El Mala’s number 13 shirt is ubiquitous in the stands of the RheinEnergie Stadium. Club manager Lukas Kwasniok describes the winger as “a street footballer with God-given talent”. And if Guardiola, who has reportedly studied the player’s footage and sent City scouts to Cologne to keep an eye on him, needs further information about El Mala’s ability to confuse opposition defences, he can simply make a phone call to the club’s former captain, Bayern Munich manager Vincent Kompany.
“This boy has a first gear and then a second burst of speed,” Kompany said recently. “That surprises a lot of defenders, and he can shoot when he runs at speed. That feeling of being inactive and then suddenly launching a full-scale counter-attack is of course a quality that you can use throughout your career.”
Considering his journey from Gladbach to Cologne, that image of relative inactivity followed by a burst of unbridled pace might as well serve as a nice summary of El Mala’s entire career.
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