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After a long slump: this HSV player could really hurt FC When a club threatened with relegation loans a player for a key position for half a year, they naturally hope for immediate help—and certainly not that, just a few weeks later, the player says: "I'm a young player who still needs to develop. I'm not a finished product. " And yet, HSV may have done everything right with their winter loan.
At least, if history repeats itself. Damian Downs' young career has already been marked by massive highs and lows. After the striker quickly made the leap from FC's youth ranks to the pros, he scored his first Bundesliga goal in a derby against Gladbach, delivered the 3-2 winning goal against Union Berlin on the penultimate matchday of the 23/24 season—prompting the loudest FC goal celebration since May 2017—and then, just a week later, suffered a disastrous relegation with the team in Heidenheim.
The next high was supposed to follow in the subsequent season. The 21-year-old was the starting striker for almost the entire season in the cathedral city and played a crucial role in helping Cologne achieve promotion again with twelve goals. But even this high was followed by a painful low.
📸 Christof Koepsel - 2025 Getty Images So, last summer, the US international moved to FC Southampton in the English Championship. After Downs provided an assist in his very first match, nothing else went right. At first, the eight-million man only got a few minutes as a substitute; later, he wasn’t even in the squad.
The notoriously scathing criticism, combined with the insults he had to endure on the island, even led him to freeze all his social media channels to this day. Although the tall striker has been back in Germany since the beginning of this year, he hasn’t really managed to overcome this low. In his seven Bundesliga matches for HSV, the native of Lower Franconia has contributed neither a goal nor an assist.