Salih Özcan

Salih Özcan — Biography

Salih Özcan is a defensive midfielder who came up in Germany, played for its youth national teams and then chose Turkey. He was in the Turkey squad that reached the quarter-finals of Euro 2024, played the 2023-24 Champions League final with Borussia Dortmund, and has been at Beşiktaş since July 2026.

His family, originally from Malatya, lived in Cologne, where he began in the amateur club West Köln and moved to the youth ranks of 1. FC Köln at nine. He first appeared for the senior side against Schalke 04 in September 2016 and was a regular in midfield in 2017-18; in 2017 he received the Fritz Walter Medal in gold as Germany's best U-19 player, and in 2018-19 he won the 2. Bundesliga. On loan at Holstein Kiel in 2019-20 he scored 5 goals in 28 games. In May 2022 he joined Dortmund for a reported fee of about 5 million euros. Dortmund recalled him in January 2025 from a loan at VfL Wolfsburg, and he left in the summer of 2026 when his contract ended.

He played for Germany from U-15 to U-21, winning bronze at the 2015 European U-17 Championship and the 2021 European U-21 Championship, in whose final he played. In March 2022, called up by Stefan Kuntz, he chose Turkey and made his debut in a friendly against Italy. He scored his first international goal against Spain in November 2025 and was named in the 2026 World Cup squad.