As a Bielefeld boy, he has been playing in his native city again since 2019. There, Fabian Kunze’s contract with Arminia ends in the summer. Currently, the midfielder is doing a good job in the central defence.
The mileage? Decent. Fabian Kunze recently covered 12.05 kilometres against Union Berlin. The passing rate? Above average. 81 percent of the balls he played found a Bielefeld addressee. The duel balance? Strong. The 23-year-old won 73 per cent of all duels on the day.
Defensively strong, offensively capable of improvement
“He played very clearly, did his job well, won a lot of duels and played cleanly out from the back,” Arminia’s coach could also see that his tactical move had worked against the capital. Defensively, Kunze is doing a good job at the moment, but there is certainly room for improvement in his forward play. But: With the reliable worker as a backup at his side, Sebastian Vasiliadis, for example, was able to position himself a shade further forward in central midfield and thus supply the central offensive Alessandro Schöpf even better. Bielefeld dominated this part of the pitch and hardly allowed Union to develop.
Kunze closes Prietl gap
Captain Manuel Prietl is still missing from this part of the team after his COVID-19 illness, and the Austrian’s comeback attempts in training and matches have not yet been successful. Kunze is filling the gap in these weeks, and after 16 games (ten graded) he now has a respectable grade point average of 3.5. With his robust, reliable manner, always tough on the opponent, he is also advertising himself for an extension of his contract, which expires in June. “It doesn’t depend on this one game. The trust in him is there, he has to act in a way that convinces all sides,” Kramer said after the 1-0 win on Saturday. But the pendulum could swing in the direction of further cooperation, or so the trend suggests.
From Schalke to Arminia
For Arminia as well as for Kunze, it could also be the most obvious solution. Born in Bielefeld, Kunze once blossomed at district club VfL Theesen, known for its good youth work, tried his hand at the Schalke Knappenschmiede for a year in 2014/15 and experienced his first years in men’s football at regional league club SV Rödinghausen from 2015 to 2019 – including playing side-by-side with Nikola Serra, the brother of his current Bielefeld team-mate Janni Serra, and the highlight of a 3: 2 victory in the DFB-Pokal in August 2018 against Dresden, which at the time meant the end for the later Arminia promotion coach Uwe Neuhaus on the Dynamo bench.
In Rödinghausen, he also parted ways in sporting terms for the first time in his career in 2017 with his twin brother Lukas Kunze, who moved to VfL Osnabrück. Fabian, meanwhile, whose father Tobias also once kicked for Arminia in the juniors, has now been playing for his city again since 2019 as a Bielefeld boy. After promotion, he made a proud 26 appearances in the Bundesliga in 2020/21. He can still surpass that mark in the current season – he has just completed a yellow ban. If he succeeds, this will certainly increase the prospect of another chapter with the East Westphalians.
