Thilo Kehrer: The German Defender Who's Making a Name For Himself at West Ham

Born in 1996 in the small Stuttgart town of Tubingen in the canton of Baiden Wurttemberg in Germany, Thilo Kehrer knew he wanted to play football as soon as he was able to take his first steps. In 2000, he joined TSG Tubingen academy and his parents encouraged a hobby that soon become an all-consuming obsession. 

Aged just 14, Thilo had already switched from right back to centre back, sharpened and honed his abilities on the pitch enough to catch the of Bundesliga club Stuttgart, where he quickly ranked up in the academy and eventually established himself as one of the best young centre backs in the German youth set up. 

At this point, he was still young, naïve and playing close to home. Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg. But after his two years at Stuttgart, he took an even bigger step, by joining Schalke 04. Although Bayern have utterly dominated German football and Schalke doesn’t have any recent successes to their name, Die Königblausen have the second most fan memberships of all clubs in Germany and the fourth largest fan memberships in the world.  

It was on this high-pressure stage that Thilo moulded his game, shaping into the confident, assured and intelligent defender we see now. The man entrusted with sculpting this development was Norbert Elgert, who has been a key part of Schalke’s coaching staff, both in the senior and academy sides, for 26 years. Elgert has been credited with some of the early development of Mesut Özil, Manuel Neuer, Julian Draxler, Leroy Sane and many other stalwart professionals.