Can Julian Draxler still kick-start a fading career?

He used to be considered a great talent in German and world football. But Julian Draxler has not been able to fulfil his potential. Why did his career stall? Can he still get back on his feet?

In the 2010/11 season, he made his first appearance for Schalke as a 17-year-old and immediately showed his talent. At the age of 18, he made his first appearance for the German national team.

Draxler gradually worked his way into the starting line-up and became one of Schalke’s key players. To this day, he is one of the youngest players in Bundesliga history to make his 100th start.

Already in the 2012/13 season he scored 10 goals in 30 games in the Bundesliga. At that time, big clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern and Liverpool were interested in him. But Draxler stayed and scored only two goals in the following season.

In the summer of 2014, he became a world champion. But he contributed only 14 minutes on the pitch. In the 2014/15 season, Draxler was sidelined by injury for quite a long time, but even so, teams from Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Juventus were interested in him.

In the summer of 2015, Draxler decided to move to Wolfsburg, who were building an ambitious team at the time. Personally, he was quite successful, but the team was too weak overall, finishing only eighth in the league.

At Euro 2016 he played almost all the games and scored once. Still, after a weaker fall in 2016 and due to injuries, a surprise move to PSG came. He started his engagement there decently, scoring 4 goals in 17 games in spring 2017.

In January 2018, his value went up to €40 million. Since then, it’s basically just been going downhill. In a PSG jersey, he has never managed to cross the four goals scored in a season mark.

His competitors in the line-up were Neymar, Di María, Cavani, Moura, Mbappé, Sarabia. While the first half of his Paris engagement was still quite successful for Draxler, from the autumn of 2019 it was more of a paberking.

Injuries began to mount, his importance in the PSG team declined, especially after the arrival of Lionel Messi. In the summer of 2022, after a knee injury, PSG decided to send him on loan to Benfica.

But even there, it’s not all glory. Draxler has only 10 league games and one goal to his name. He is currently out for the rest of the season after ankle surgery. His value has dropped to just €8 million.

In his career Julian Draxler has suffered from frequent health problems. However, he hasn’t been helped too much by the fact that PSG increasingly resembles an ensemble of global megastars and that the team still had Neymar in his favourite position on the left throughout his time at PSG.

Maybe he could have left Schalke earlier, maybe the move to PSG was too much of a bite for him. Or maybe, like say Mario Götze, he was past his peak performance too soon.

Source: Transfermarkt