Regional Football League: The Warrior

In the middle of the conversation, Aytac Sulu has already spent half an hour talking about his time as a player at SV Darmstadt 98 and his new role at Viktoria Aschaffenburg . So, in the middle of the conversation, he suddenly pivots to TSG Hoffenheim and talks about the "golden taps" they had there. Sulu laughs. He means it figuratively, of course. What he's really trying to say is: What he found in Hoffenheim is nothing like what he's finding now in Aschaffenburg. But that's okay. Aytac Sulu is simply making the best of it.

Make the best of it: This may sound like a platitude, but it runs so consistently through Sulu's biography that one could think it was his guiding principle, perhaps even his life's work.

Most recently, he worked as an assistant coach at Hoffenheim, first with the U-17 team, then with the Regionalliga team. He's never been in the front row. Sulu, 39, sits in an office at the Aschaffenburg training ground, his T-shirt stretched tight on his upper arms, his left forearm is tattooed, and his beard is neat, not as long as it sometimes was during his time as a Bundesliga player in Darmstadt.

As a coach, Sulu no longer has to instill fear in opposing strikers; he now simply stands on the sidelines and watches. Although, he doesn't just watch. Most of the time, he energetically participates. Fundamentally, says Sulu, he is still the same person he was back then on the pitch. "There isn't much difference. I'm just standing somewhere different," says the coach, and then explains that his team should play the way he used to. For someone like him, football is first and foremost work. That's how he has always understood the game. And now his new team should be his image. "The non-talent characteristics are the most important thing: that you can run and fight," says Sulu.

So Aytac Sulu is and will remain Aytac Sulu. That's one of the reasons why he's sitting here now, in this room at the Schönbusch training ground. Behind him hang two pictures: Aschaffenburg players dressed in white and blue, hugging each other. How often will that happen this season?

There are serious doubts in the city as to whether Viktoria is up to the challenge of the Regionalliga. More than an entire team has left the club, and the arrivals are primarily made up of young players who still have to prove they have what it takes to compete in the Regionalliga. The doubters were confirmed by a 4-0 defeat to SpVgg Greuther Fürth II at the season opener. Last season, the club only managed to avoid relegation, and now, according to reports, the budget is only half what it was. Can this work? Or are they just running blindly into the abyss?

Aytac Sulu doesn't understand the question. He admits that it would be "something really big" if Viktoria were to stay in the league. But doubts?

"I didn't have a second of concerns," Sulu assures, his thoughts suddenly returning to the day he first visited the grounds. Viktoria has several artificial and natural grass pitches, and the team plays in a stadium, not just on a sports field like other fourth-division teams. Sure, the standing areas are overgrown with weeds, and you can now see how much the shower heads have been through. But wasn't that the case in Darmstadt, too?

When he mentions the shower heads and the weeds, he doesn't grimace. He doesn't roll his eyes either; quite the opposite: Aytac Sulu smiles. His heart seems to warm. If players come to Viktoria, despite the way things are here, that must mean they really want to tear themselves apart like Sulu used to.

And that's how he learned it from his childhood. He comes from a family of migrant workers, growing up with two older siblings as the son of a janitor and an assembly line worker in Nußloch, not far from Heidelberg. When a school trip required a subsidy from his parents, little Aytac often didn't go and was temporarily placed in a parallel class. "It was the most normal thing in the world for me when that happened," he says today. He simply grew up in modest circumstances: "We didn't have the money to go to McDonald's once a week. We sometimes had pasta with tomato sauce two or three days in a row."

Perhaps that's why Aytac Sulu has become the way he is today. Perhaps that's the reason why he never complains or moans when things get tough, but instead rolls up his T-shirt sleeves and gets to work. With this attitude, he seems to be in the right place at the right time in Aschaffenburg.