I will never forget Benjamin Pavard’s debut for Stuttgart. It came on 3 October 2016, a few months after he had joined from Lille and at a time when everyone at the club was still getting used to life in the second division having been relegated from the Bundesliga the previous season.
We were playing SpVgg Greuther Fürth at home and it is no exaggeration to say Benjamin had a dream start to life in Germany. We won 4-0 and, as well as scoring our third goal, he set up the first, for Carlos Mané, with an incredible pass. Benjamin was stood at centre-back and played a perfectly-weighted ball right though midfield and practically on to Carlos’s toe. It was the type of pass you’d expected to see from an experienced playmaker, not a young defender, and as I watched from the stands I thought there was no way Benjamin could be that good. I was wrong.
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