Official: Bayern team s second team signs, former Bundesliga player Ye Luo returns to his roots

How did they convince a player who has been playing in the top league for many years to join the U23 echelon?

Bayern Munich Club announced through its official website that the team has signed back to former youth training player Benno Schmitz from partner Grasshoppers Zurich. The 30-year-old defensive all-rounder (main center back or right back) will fill the last place in Bayern's second team's overage player. The club's official announcement also gives us a wonderful review of the player's career:

Schmitz, born in Munich in 1994, joined the German "Record Champion" youth training camp in 2001 and spent his entire teenage years here. In 2013, he was promoted to the amateur team (i.e., second team) by Eric Tenhach, then the coach of Bayern second team, and at the end of the 2013/14 season, he won the Bavarian Regional League championship with the team. That season, as the absolute main player, he played 35 times and scored 3 goals.

Schmitz also recalled his valuable experience in training in the first team: "My whole youth was shaped by Bayern. We won the Southern Division with the U17 and U19 echelons, and experienced two exciting play-offs to advance to Germany C. Of course, I will never forget the days of participating in training under Pep Guardiola and Yup Heinx."

Since then, his career has been higher:

The 30-year-old player later joined the Salzburg Red Bull, where he not only played 24 times in the Austrian League One, but also gained 5 European experience, and was crowned the Austrian "Double Championship" with the team in 2015 and 2016. In the summer of 2016, he switched to RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga and joined Cologne two years later. He spent the longest time in Cologne, playing for the Rams for six seasons.

In his first season in Cologne, Schmitz helped the team return to the Bundesliga directly. Another highlight of his career occurred in 2022. That year, Cologne successfully qualified for the European Union, and Schmitz once again received four valuable European appearances. In 2024, Cologne was unfortunately relegated from the Bundesliga, and Schmitz also left the team and joined the Zurich Grasshoppers. There, he helped the team successfully relegation in the second half of the season with Ilan Kunda and De Tony, who also came on loan from Bayern. In the first leg of the relegation playoffs, Schmitz contributed two assists.

Now, this wandering wanderer who has been wandering for many years has returned to Munich, and he also revealed the core reason for his return: "I want to go home - the family has played a very important role in my decision. I am very much looking forward to this new challenge."

There is no doubt that the partnership between Bayern and Zurich Grasshoppers has facilitated this transfer. Considering that Schmitz's contract with Grasshoppers will not expire until 2027, Bayern must have paid him a (unpublished) transfer fee. Schmitz will also become the second over-age defender in Bayern's second team after Breit Kreuz, who is currently injured, but his contract is about to expire and there is no sign of renewal.

It was an incredible signing anyway. Bayern actually successfully convinced a player at the Bundesliga (the worst is also the Bundesliga) to come to the regional league to "reduce the dimensionality strike". How exactly did they do it?

This is also the fifth signing of Bayern second team this summer. The previous few signings have shown that the team's determination to strive for the German League C in the new season, and Schmitz's joining is the strongest and clearest signal. For this powerful Bayern second team, if it fails to successfully advance to Germany and C next season, it will undoubtedly be a major failure.