{"id":46346,"date":"2022-07-29T13:02:31","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T20:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=46346"},"modified":"2022-07-29T13:02:31","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T20:02:31","slug":"azmoun-the-secret-superstar-of-the-bundesliga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2022\/07\/29\/azmoun-the-secret-superstar-of-the-bundesliga\/","title":{"rendered":"Azmoun &#8211; The secret superstar of the Bundesliga"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sport Bild &#8211; LEVERKUSEN, <strong>With the striker, Leverkusen\u00a0wants to\u00a0attack Bayern.\u00a0He knows how it&#8217;s done: Sardar Azmoun is the Werkself title collector!\u00a0He almost became a volleyball player.\u00a0SPORT BILD introduces him.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Germany, many football fans will only now really get to know his name &#8211; in his homeland, you no longer have to explain it.&nbsp;Sardar Azmoun (27) is the secret superstar of the Bundesliga.&nbsp;In Iran he is a folk hero.&nbsp;With 4.8 million followers on Instagram, he has more than Dortmund&#8217;s world champion Mats Hummels (33\/4.1 million) &#8211; and that&#8217;s only a fraction of what you should know about him&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Leverkusen took the top scorer in the 2019\/20 Russian Premier League (17 goals) just before the end of the winter transfer window last January for \u20ac2.5m from Zenit St. Petersburg.&nbsp;A preview of the new season.&nbsp;Azmoun and Bayer had initially agreed on a free transfer for the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the versatile attacking player, the Werkself not only finally got a title collector (he won four championships, one cup and two Supercups with Zenit in Russia), but also the greatest horse whisperer in the league: Azmoun, whose parents are from Turkmenistan, has 52 (!) racehorses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey are in Iran and Australia.&nbsp;I bought my first horse when I was 17,\u201d says the player, whose first name is Sardar on his jersey with the number 9, to SPORT BILD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Azmoun grew up around horses.&nbsp;When he talks about his childhood, the international beams: \u201cWhen I was little, my father, grandfather and my uncle had horses on their big farm.&nbsp;Horses have always played a big role in our family.&nbsp;Thanks to my father&#8217;s help, I was able to ride horses at the age of three.&nbsp;That was the beginning of my love for these animals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Azmoun assures that he knows the names of all 52 horses.&nbsp;He is particularly taken with the stallion Serkan: \u201cI love all my horses, but Serkan and his father are my favourites.&nbsp;Serkan is one year old, he will be racing when he is two years old.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Galloping is the football pro&#8217;s great passion.&nbsp;His family has already won prize money of up to 25,000 euros in races.&nbsp;But who will take care of the horses while Azmoun is due to attack champions FC Bayern with Leverkusen in Germany?&nbsp;The Footballer of the Year in Russia 2021 says: &#8220;I have a big farm and a manager for it in Iran, I have trainers, riders for training and jockeys for the races.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Azmoun is not only an extraordinary personality because of his enthusiasm for equestrian sports.\u00a0He could have made a career as a volleyball player.\u00a0Volleyball was and is an important sport in his family.\u00a0He himself was a U15 national player in his country, but then decided on football.\u00a0Azmoun proved that he hasn&#8217;t forgotten anything on the net at the Leverkusen training camp in Zell am See\/Kaprun last week, when he showed his class at beach volleyball with his colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After FK Rostov and Zenit, Bayer 04 is the third club that Azmoun starts with in the Champions League.&nbsp;&#8220;Leverkusen is the best club team I&#8217;ve ever played for,&#8221; he emphasizes.&nbsp;&#8220;I&#8217;ve never seen a club work so professionally, but with great respect for each other.&nbsp;When a new player comes, he never feels like a stranger.&nbsp;Personally, I immediately felt at home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the World Cup in Qatar, an entire country relies on the striker.&nbsp;As vice-captain, Azmoun is expected to shoot the Iranians into the round of 16 in the group against England, the USA and Wales.&nbsp;If it works, then at the latest he will no longer be a secret star in the Bundesliga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sport Bild &#8211; LEVERKUSEN, With the striker, Leverkusen\u00a0wants to\u00a0attack Bayern.\u00a0He knows how it&#8217;s done: Sardar&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":46347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":2531,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46348,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46346\/revisions\/46348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}