The Austrian soccer champion Red Bull Salzburg will compete in the Champions League at VfL Wolfsburg on Tuesday evening with a former German junior national goalkeeper. “It’s nice for me to play in Germany again. But the important thing is that we decide the game in our favor. The Champions League is always something extremely special,” said 23-year-old Philipp Köhn at the press conference in Wolfsburg on Monday Calf clubs.

Köhn is the son of a German father and a Swiss mother. In his youth he played for his hometown club SuS Dinslaken, MSV Duisburg, FC Schalke 04 and VfB Stuttgart before signing his first professional contract with RB Leipzig in 2017. From the U15 to the U18, the goalkeeper played for the national teams of the German Football Association, and has been a junior national player in Switzerland since the U19. In 2018 he moved to Salzburg, was loaned for one season each to FC Liefering in Austria and FC Wil in Switzerland before he rose to number one that season. His competitors also come from Germany: U21 national goalkeeper Nico Mantl and the 38-year-old Alexander Walke.

Köhn has great respect for the Wolfsburgers. “You could see in the first leg what quality they have in the whole squad,” he said. The return of the VfL striker Wout Weghorst after his two-week quarantine would increase the death rate: “In the front of the storm it makes a difference whether someone is two meters tall in front. But we are very well prepared.”