John Tolkin suffered relegation from the German Bundesliga in his first season abroad, but isn’t planning for a lengthy stay in the second-tier.
Tolkin and his Holstein Kiel teammates are preparing for Saturday’s Bundesliga finale against Borussia Dortmund before the summer international window begins. The former New York Red Bulls homegrown defender made the move to Germany last January and quickly became a regular contributor in the squad.
Despite a sad ending to his opening four months with the club, Tolkin has high hopes for Holstein Kiel’s future.
“If all goes well, we will be back here at the end of next season,” Tolkin told reporters at a Bundesliga media roundtable on Thursday. “I think the team is going to be really solid next year and we are going to be fighting for promotion back to the Bundesliga.
“The Bundesliga is one of the best leagues in the world and the support each weekend has been great,” Tolkin said about the fans support. “Even in one of the saddest times of the season when we knew we were relegated, the fans were applauding us and clapping us for our efforts in the season.”
Tolkin, 22, has made 10 appearances for Holstein Kiel this season, registering two assists. He made his first start for the club against eventual league champions, Bayern Munich, while also appearing against RB Leipzig and Borussia Moenchengladbach.
While many young players might have to wait for their opportunity, Tolkin was thrown right into the mix and relished in the opportunity.
“I think the pinching myself moment was against Bayern,” Tolkin said about his move to the Bundesliga. “I remember the coach pulling me into his office and saying he was going to play me and overall I thought we did well that match.
“Being able to jump right into matches and into the culture has been pretty cool,” he added. “It’s provided a good opportunity for me to grow as a player and a person in a new country.”
Similar to several former MLS academy players, Tolkin is one of a growing list of American players in the Bundesliga. From Gio Reyna to Joe Scally to James Sands, the list of American talent continues to grow in Germany’s top flight.
While his competitive schedule takes priority, Tolkin did admit to connecting with his international teammates.
“I was able to talk to Joe [Scally] after the Gladbach game and just connect with how my time in Germany has been going,” he said. “James Sands is about one hour away in Hamburg so it’s pretty cool to have the guys not far away to connect with.”
Tolkin, who has four senior caps with the U.S. men’s national team, likely will be a candidate for Mauricio Pochettino’s CONCACAF Gold Cup roster this summer. The versatile fullback will certainly be fighting to become the USMNT’s No. 2 left back behind Antonee Robinson.
Whether or not Pochettino decides to call in Tolkin for June’s pair of pre-Gold Cup friendlies remains to be seen, but the New Jersey native is ready for the call either way.
“I had some contact with them this past week and I think in my eyes, I have played well enough to earn an opportunity,” Tolkin said. “I think for the friendlies and the Gold Cup, it would be a good chance for me, especially with the World Cup coming next year.”
Holstein Kiel will close its 2024-25 season on Saturday before a summer tour in the United States to kickstart the new campaign preparations.
This kid has cohones. During the 2nd to last match against SC Freiburg he attempted to beat the SCF keeper while taking a free kick from the defensive half. Atubolu was off his line and Tolkin took a wach at it. It was wide but had it Atubolu very interested and tracking back in nervously before he realized it would go wide. Audacious attempt coming from the young American in his first season in the Bundesliga. He was also taking their corners.
gold cup provo roster deadline is today, i’ll be curious if he’s on it, that’ll tell you if he’s even in contention for the friendlies or the tournament. they badly need to get the backline sorted with some folks who can mark. i’ve said my piece on i think they need to try some fresher faces. if this is another usual suspects A team tournament after copa and NL then this is going noplace. your best paper XI is not necessarily your best soccer team. we don’t play as a unit.
“holstein kiel” didn’t sound long for the B1, sorry. is he sure he’s being kept when they drop. if they keep him maybe he plays more a division down.
Name me 8 American defenders that can mark? 4 CBs 4 FBs. And if you start with Dettoni and I’m just going to laugh. (Plus I’m pretty sure he’s injured)
CB – Zimmerman, Robinson, kinda-sorta Richards, kinda-sorta McKenzie
FB – Joe Scally, DuJuan Jones, and I hate to admit it, Reggie Cannon…after that, I got nothin’ and I really thought about it
Now ask me how some of those guys are on the ball or in distribution, or how much offensive and overlapping ability any of them except DuJuan Jones provides…and you’ll get a very different answer. But in terms of man-marking those guys can do it.
Q: Zimmerman is out currently with a head injury but is expected back in the next few weeks. Jones is a guy I like (wish The Crew could have kept him), but he’s a get forward guy not a great man marker. With you McKenzie and Richards can mark but have frequent lapses when they don’t (especially Mark). Cannon, as a man marker is a stretch. Scally does a decent job on his man but I’ve noticed falls a sleep on the back post.
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I think IV would discount most of these guys anyway since they’re the status quo. I was looking for these new faces he wants to see.
I didn’t say any of them were “great” man-markers, just the ones I’ve seen do it with some degree of proficiency. As far as elite ones…(crickets chirp). Don’t short Jones as a man-marker, though, he’s decent when called upon to do so, incredibly athletic, very physical. I was hoping he’d grow in Nancy’s system but clearly he wanted to start and the Crew didn’t want to spend so much on a guy who was a third FB.
Q: as I’ve told you before I preferred Jones to Arfsten, but understand why The Crew want to play Max in front of Jones. Arfsten is 4 yrs younger and probably has a much higher resell value.
Playing time wasn’t an issue for Tolkin. When he was healthy, he started and played most/all of the game. But I agree (I think) that a year in B2 wouldn’t be a terrible thing for him. He was decent in B1, he should be a very good player in B2.
I don’t know if his time there this spring was long enough or good enough for a B1 team to want to buy him, so my guess is that he will be in B2 next year.
IV,
“fresher faces”?
Like who? You got any names?
A player comes in on defense, is unconvincing or gets burnt, is labeled defensively suspect, gets pulled and replaced.
This happens with every team right? Sure, except that in the context of the USMNT this kind of process could be called editing, not coaching.
You also are very vague about how to go about this.
Replace both CB’s at once or one at a time?
Replace both fullbacks at once or one at a time?
And that is just the back four.
Unlike you, I believe that on a well-coached team all 11 starters as well as all 5 subs affect how everyone else plays. Switching out both fullbacks, or even one fullback can have a significant effect on how the team plays overall.
Carry this out to its logical extreme and you’ll see that Pochettino would have had very little time to do that even if he had started with game #1,and even if all the replacements were instant successes and turned out to be world class players.
Replacing a defensively weak player with a defensively strong player makes sense, if that is what is required. But it has to align with the identity of the team. What does that mean?
It means if you drop everyone then you have a brand-new team. Individually, the team may have more defensively strong individuals but the team defense will have suffered due to the lack of cohesion.
What do you do if USMNT IV GB free 2.0 goes into the Gold Cup and the IV replacements suck?
What if these guys are worse than what we have now?
You ignore the fact that the USMNT has:
• an extremely limited time frame.
• a limited number of replacement candidates.
Your desired process is basically a cattle call. You are just throwing guys up on a wall until one of them sticks. Which is fine if you are Manchester City and literally have the entire world to keep calling in until they get it right. The USMNT on the other hand, has only so many players it can try out before it hits a wall.
Even more important, City and most any club team, also have a ton more time for this process than Pochettino.
Unlike you, even the dunderheads at the USSF know that.
That’s why they paid Mr. P the big bucks. They expect him to earn it.
Everyone, except for you, understands that the USSF are dealing with a limited time frame and limited player resources here. Before he agreed to this project my guess is that Pochettino and his people evaluated the player pool and the team as much as they could. My guess is they concluded there was enough there to work with. And they might be right.
But regardless of how good Pochettino is and how hard he works, this is still a big gamble for him.
From the outside and we are all, even you, on the outside of this sucker, he has all the tools to have a decent run.
He’s still sorting out who his core guys will be.
Once he gets that core then I think he’ll figure out a suitable style and tactics.
But I’ll be surprised if Pochettino pulls this off. And to be clear pulling this off means, advance out of the group, win the knockout game, win the quarterfinals then win or at least not get slaughtered, in the semis. JK reached the semis in Copa America but y’all sneered at him because they got beat up 4-0 by , of all teams, Argentina 4-0. For some reason, we weren’t supposed to lose that badly to those guys.
If they make the semis this time then who knows?