The Estadio da Luz was less a football stadium on December 5th 2017, more a meeting point for a who’s who of European giants. Scouts working on behalf of no fewer than 26 clubs were in attendance in the Portuguese capital as Dimitri Oberlin’s Basel took on Benfica in the Champions League group stages (BlueWin).
And as the 20-year-old striker burst onto a clever through ball before scoring his fourth of the group stage, and his third against Benfica alone, those representing Manchester United, Real Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Roma and Arsenal would have been filling up their notebook with compliments for Oberlin’s razor-sharp movement and ice-cool finishing.
Oberlin, on loan from renowned-talentspotters Red Bull Salzburg, also caught the eye of Tottenham Hotspur (Salzburger Nachricthen).
This, it seemed, was a striker who had it all. The world at his feet. A one-way ticket to the top.
So why, five years on, is Dimitri Oberlin not the household name he was tipped to become? Why, five years on, has he never set again foot onto Champions League soil? An answer is difficult to decipher. A series of niggling injuries haven’t helped. What’s more, this is not the first young player who struggled to live up to such rapidly rising expectations.
A classic case of too much, too soon perhaps?
What happened to Dimitri Oberlin?
You certainly won’t see Oberlin in UCL action this week. He won’t be taking part in the Europa League either. Or the Conference League for that matter.
At the age of 24, the Cameroon-born forward is now plying his trade for the sixth-best team in Switzerland; FC Servette. In fact, since leaving Salzburg permanently in the summer of 2018, he’s scored just eight times in 97 games during spells at Basel, Empoli, Zulte-Waregam, Servette and even with Bayern Munich’s B team.
“Somewhere between genius and madness,” Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung wrote of Oberlin during 2017; when the hype surrounding the then-Basel loanee was at it’s most fierce.
“Unbelievable,” said then-coach Raphael Wicky after a sensational display against Benfica. “Dimitri defends the ball at his own post and then makes a mega sprint over 80 yards.
“He just sees the gap and has the necessary pace. He is dangerous and difficult to stop.”
Ahead of Basel’s early-2018 knockout round clash with Manchester City, ESPN even warned Pep Guardiola’s side of the dangers of Oberlin’s ‘blistering pace’.
Perhaps the player himself should instead have been warned of the dangers of football’s fickle nature instead.
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