In December 2019 we profiled László Bénes as Borussia Mönchengladbach's midfield maestro in waiting and predicted a move to Borussia Dortmund. That call missed, and we would rather show you how it missed than bury the article. Bénes went on to have a proper career, just not the one we drew up for him. Here is the original scouting picture, and then what our platform data says actually happened.
The player we profiled in 2019
Gladbach's record of producing players speaks for itself: Ter Stegen went on to Barcelona, Marco Reus to Dortmund, and the club's youth work was admired across Germany. Bénes looked like the next graduate ready to break through into that lineage. Born on 9 September 1997 in Dunajská Streda, Slovakia, he was a 22-year-old left-footed central midfielder, 181cm, on a contract running to 2024, and enjoying his best stretch since moving to Germany in 2016: 19 matches across all competitions by mid-December of the 19/20 season.
What we saw then
Bénes had famously turned down a move to Arsenal as a youngster, which told you something about his maturity, and his game invited comparisons with his countryman Marek Hamsik: intelligent, creative, always showing for the ball so he could move it forward to a teammate. By December he had set up four goals in 13 league appearances. He was a technician rather than an athlete, a genuine midfield maestro profile, with a free-kick and a long shot that made goalkeepers nervous, and a work rate that let him boss midfields without dominating them physically. Having a midfielder like that in your team simply gives you an edge over the opposition's midfield, and we said as much at the time.
Strengths
- Elite passing range, finding teammates through traffic with ease
- Set-piece delivery and a dangerous strike from distance
- Relentless work rate for a technical player
Weaknesses
The usual bill for a creator: his tackling and man-marking lagged well behind his ball work, and he was never going to win duels the way defenders do. We argued then that judging a playmaker on a destroyer's attributes is unfair, and that training and experience would round off the sharpest edges. That was mostly right; he never became a ball-winner, and it never mattered much.
The road that got him there
His journey was the part of the profile that stuck with us. He left Slovakia as a teenager to play for ETO Győr's U19s in Hungary, moved back to MSK Zilina in early 2015, and after a season and a half of standout football Gladbach paid around 2 million for him, serious money for a Slovak prospect at the time. He earned a senior Slovakia call-up and nine Bundesliga appearances at 19. Then came the hard years: a big injury, a rotational role, doubts from the fans about whether the club had overpaid for an unknown kid, and an 18/19 loan to Holstein Kiel to rebuild his rhythm. He did not let any of it put him down. By our 2019 article he had played roughly 19 of a possible 24 matches and was quietly delivering consistent performances, a machine doing a lot of unglamorous work, for a Gladbach side enjoying one of its best seasons in years. We wrote then that his story was one that motivated and compelled us, and it still does. Steve's own playing career was ended by a knee injury, so players who claw their way back from one get watched a little more closely in this house.
What we predicted
Transfermarkt, whose profile of him is still online, valued him at 6 million euros in December 2019. We forecast 8 to 10 million at the next update and up to 13 million if he hit 18 appearances. Our scenario ladder went from an Augsburg or Eintracht Frankfurt loan on a quiet season, through Schalke or RB Leipzig on a good one, up to Dortmund, Liverpool or Everton on a very good one. Our headline prediction: a very good season and a move to Borussia Dortmund.
The honest scorecard: the bottom rung of our ladder is the one he stepped on. Per our database, his next chapter was Augsburg, the exact club we named in the modest scenario. We had written that the sky was the limit for him, and that pursuit and hunger alone would make him one for the future. The Dortmund call was hope dressed up as analysis, and rereading it now is a useful reminder of the difference. When you admire a player's story as much as we admired his, the forecast tends to drift toward the ceiling.
Where is he now
Our platform has Bénes at Kayserispor in the Turkish Süper Lig. The season-by-season record in our database traces the whole road from Gladbach to Anatolia.
| Season | Club | Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020/21 | FC Augsburg | 24 | 2 |
| 2021/22 | Borussia Mönchengladbach | 13 | 0 |
| 2022/23 | Hamburger SV | 31 | 5 |
| 2023/24 | Hamburger SV | 27 | 13 |
| 2024/25 | Union Berlin | 23 | 2 |
| 2025/26 | Kayserispor | 32 | 7 |
Two things jump out of that table. First, the return to Gladbach in 2021/22 produced 13 quiet appearances without a goal, and that closed the Mönchengladbach chapter for good, five and a half years after the club took its 2 million gamble on him. Second, and this is the part we love, look at Hamburg: 31 appearances with five goals and nine assists, then 27 appearances with 13 goals and 11 assists in 2023/24. In the second division, everything we described in 2019, the left foot, the set pieces, the shot from distance, finally had room to run the show. That form bought him a Bundesliga return with Union Berlin in 2024/25, where the minutes came but the numbers did not, and in 2025/26 he was a fixture in Turkey: 32 league appearances and seven goals for Kayserispor at 28. His current numbers are on his Field Insider scout report.
Our verdict, then and now
We got the player right and the level wrong. Bénes really was the intelligent, creative left foot we described, and his Hamburg seasons are the proof, but the top of the Bundesliga asks for more than technique and work rate, and he could not quite force his way in there. Predicting Dortmund was our mistake, not his. What we respect most is unchanged from 2019: he kept moving, kept playing, and kept producing wherever the game took him, from Zilina to Hamburg to Kayseri. I never got anywhere near his level as a player, but I recognise the type from every dressing room I sat in: the one who is still standing at 28 because he never stopped working. That was the real story in our original article. We just wrapped the wrong prediction around it.