Reported Arsenal target Angelo Stiller models his game on Toni Kroos and Spanish legend Xabi Alonso, while admitting to Kicker that he may have to leave Bayern Munich in search of first-team football.
A Bavarian-born 19-year-old is not the only fresh-faced playmaker to rise through the ranks at Saberner Strasse while earning comparisons with a 2014 World Cup winner.
Like Niklas Dorsch, who is now making a name for himself at Heidenheim after failing to make the grade with the Bundesliga champions, Stiller is fully aware that he may be better off as the lead man in an indie film rather than an extra at FC Hollywood.
BILD reported in May that Arsenal would love to snap up another of Europe’s most highly-rated young midfielders, two years after they brought the thrilling yet flawed Matteo Guendouzi to the Emirates.
And if Stiller goes on to taste half the success enjoyed by Kroos and Alonso, the teenager could make a huge impact in England.
“I am a Bavarian through and through. Munich is my home, but of course I have to see where I would be best suited, from a best sporting perspective,” says Stiller, after helping Bayern’s B team win the third-tier title for the first time ever.
“How Xabi Alonso plays is fantastic. I would also like to play that way. Or like Toni Kroos, who only plays with one or two touches of the ball.
“This is my style of play, how I see football and the game.”
Given that Mikel Arteta has made it his mission to make an often directionless and toothless Arsenal side one of the most exciting footballing teams in European football again, Stiller’s ‘one or two touch’ style means he should fit in nicely in north London.
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