He is a 21-year-old German from the old border town of Aachen who loves donkeys and plays the piano. He is known as the best creative player of his age and is seen as a future Mesut Ozil.

When he was 17, he made his Bundesliga debut while he was still in school. This meant that his lawyer mother Anne and police inspector father Ralf were worried that playing in the Champions League and going to school would be too much for him.

In the end, it was Roger Schmidt, who was coach at the time at Bayer Leverkusen, who convinced him to keep going. Kai Havertz was told by the club’s school liaison assistant that giving up now would set a pattern for the rest of his life: it would be easy to give up when things got tough.

Havertz missed a Champions League game at Atletico Madrid to take his Abitur tests, which are like A Levels in English. Another thing he seems to have learned is how important it is to keep going. He is now the most expensive German player ever after moving from Leverkusen for £72 million and is at the center of the team Frank Lampard is building at Chelsea.

He watched Michael Ballack play as a child, first for Leverkusen and then for Chelsea. Bayern Munich, Barcelona, and Real Madrid have all shown some interest in his skills, but Lampard and Chelsea made the biggest impact by insisting he was the right player for them.

“The coach has a big effect on my decision,” Havertz said on a Zoom call in English, showing how valuable that education at the grammar school level was. “I’ve loved Chelsea all my life.” As a kid, I always watched the team, so it wasn’t hard for me to make up my mind.