Berkay Dabanlı

Berkay Dabanlı — Biography

Berkay Tolga Dabanlı is a center-back, 1.90 m tall, who grew up in Germany and has played club football in Turkey, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The high point of his career is arguably his Bundesliga arrival with 1. FC Nürnberg in 2013 and, later, 48 appearances in the Austrian Bundesliga. He holds both Turkish and German citizenship.

He started out at small clubs in Frankfurt, moved up to the reserve side of FSV Frankfurt around 2009 and won a regional league title. He has said that he turned down an offer from Eintracht Frankfurt because his parents wanted him to finish school. He then played for Bayer Leverkusen's second team, making 29 appearances and scoring once, but never broke into the first. In 2011 he went to his ancestors' homeland and signed for Kayserispor, making his Süper Lig debut in February 2012. At Nürnberg he signed in January 2013, made his Bundesliga debut as a substitute against Borussia Mönchengladbach that February and mostly came on in the closing minutes afterwards. In 2014 he signed a three-year deal with Eskişehirspor, later went to Boluspor, returned to Eskişehirspor in 2019 and left for Rheindorf Altach in Austria at the start of 2020.

In January 2022 he joined Kocaelispor, and in July of that year he moved to Switzerland with Lausanne-Sport. He has also worn the shirt of Rapperswil-Jona in Switzerland, and in 2024-25 he was a regular in the back line of Fatih Karagümrük.