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When Tottenham fans look at the attacking lineup of their opponents, FC Copenhagen, before Tuesday’s Champions League tie, a few familiar names may spring out. Mohamed Elyounoussi, formerly of Southampton and Celtic, has probably been the Danish club’s most dangerous player this season, topping their scoring and assists charts. Jordan Larsson, son of Henrik Larsson, is hugely improved this year and recently earned a recall to the Sweden squad. But perhaps the biggest surprise will be the name of Youssoufa Moukoko, the former Borussia Dortmund wonderkid who was rated as perhaps the biggest prospect in world football a few years ago.
The hype around Moukoko in 2020 was astonishing, even before he made his Dortmund debut. As a 14-year-old in 2018-19, the Cameroon-born forward scored a record 50 league goals for the German side’s under-17s, and at 13 had declared to Bild his intention to win the Ballon d’Or. Promoted to the under-19s the following season, he scored 34 goals in 20 games, also providing nine assists. A day after his 16th birthday in November 2020, Moukoko came off the bench for Erling Haaland – the teammate and neighbour who used to drive him to training and once called him “the biggest talent in the world” – to become the youngest Bundesliga player of all time. Before Christmas he became the youngest player to appear in the Champions League and score in the Bundesliga. Moukoko’s rise was unprecedented, records seemingly falling every week, and it appeared like the birth of the next global superstar.
Dortmund have a habit of developing and selling The Next Big Thing for a large fee: in recent years Ousmane Dembélé and Jude Bellingham brought in well over €100m each, while Haaland, Christian Pulisic, Jadon Sancho and Jamie Gittens have each brought in more than €50m. So when Moukoko left Dortmund quietly this summer, with FC Copenhagen paying £4.3m, it seemed as if something had badly gone awry. How did the Germany international, who went to the World Cup in 2022, go from signing a bumper new Dortmund contract in 2023 with a six-figure weekly wage to leaving the club a couple of years later?
There are a myriad of factors. To be a wonderkid, particularly at a high-profile club such as Dortmund, you have to negotiate all sorts of possible pitfalls. Form, fitness, a change of manager or agent or playing partner, a failed transfer, intense media pressure or a contract row can throw a young player off. Maybe there is a personal or family problem, sapping confidence, robbing sleep, draining motivation and fearlessness. We have witnessed, to a varying extent, the career fluctuations that Sancho, Pulisic, even Bellingham, Gittens and Dembélé – the current Ballon d’Or winner – have experienced. Not everyone can enjoy a seamless rise like Haaland and for most it is about capitalising on the peaks and riding out the troughs. That can be hard as a teenager.
Moukoko did not go from looking like a world-conquering wonderkid to a Dortmund reject overnight. It was a domino effect that started with a series of small injuries that led to a substitute role under two coaches – Marco Rose and later Edin Terzic – who subsequently put faith in others such as Donyell Malen, Karim Adeyemi and Niclas Füllkrug. Confidence sapped, Moukoko struggled for minutes and goals, which led to a failed loan at Nice last season, his departure from Dortmund apparently quickened by an incendiary interview done last summer by his agent, who told Fabrizio Romano of Dortmund’s mistakes and his client’s suitors.
At Nice, the two goals Moukoko scored on his first start were his only ones in 22 appearances. Asked recently about his experiences at the Ligue 1 club, Moukoko told the Danish broadcaster TV2: “I’ve experienced what it’s like to be at the top. I’ve also experienced what it’s like to be at the bottom. It was really tough. There were nights when I just lay awake thinking about it, I have to be honest. But it taught me to be humble, to keep my feet on the ground and not to be arrogant.
“I think it made sense for me to go through that. There were a lot of critical stories about me. In Nice, they wrote that I was out of shape. But I trained harder than ever before. I trained three times a day on my own and discovered a new motivation within myself.”
What Moukoko didn’t explicitly mention was a controversy that dominated his time in France, and caused headlines across the continent. In December 2024, a documentary entitled “Tricks, Cheats, Deception – the Million Dollar Business with Football Talents” was released, in which several damaging claims were made: Joseph Moukoko, previously recognised as Youssoufa’s father, claimed he was neither his biological parent nor was the footballer born on 20 November 2004, in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Joseph claimed Youssoufa was born on 19 July 2000. Joseph said he had falsified Youssoufa’s documents “so he could have better opportunities in European football”.
Dortmund released a strongly worded rebuttal of the documentary’s claims. “In the case of Youssoufa Moukoko, the biological parents and the date of birth are derived from official identification documents and birth certificates issued by a German authority,” a statement said. “These documents are still valid today and are the basis for playing authorisations and permits for clubs, regardless of whether they are domestic or foreign, and of course also for association teams such as the German Under-21 national team. Please also note that both the player and the biological parents identified in the above-mentioned documents have declared to us and, in the case of the parents, even to third parties through affidavits in the context of legal proceedings that the information contained in the aforementioned official documents is correct. This factual status is of course decisive for us, the DFB, and the player’s current club.”
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How the claims affected Moukoko can’t be ascertained, but his performances or minutes did not improve and he made only four substitute appearances in Ligue 1 after the documentary’s release. It is interesting that at FC Copenhagen he does not have Moukoko on the back of his shirt, preferring Youssoufa.
When Moukoko’s transfer in the summer was announced, Dortmund’s sporting director, Sebastian Kehl, mentioned that Moukoko’s “development had stalled recently” and wished him “a fresh start … to take full advantage of his undoubtedly huge potential”. FC Copenhagen acknowledged that “Youssoufa comes with a crazy amount of pressure because he has been heralded as one of the next greats in world football – with all that comes with that”.
Moukoko’s career may have stalled, but FC Copenhagen are a big club, fighting for titles and competing in the Champions League. The 20-year-old’s had no more than a steady start in Denmark until he netted a cup hat-trick last Wednesday and another goal in the league on Saturday. He is proof that a lot can happen in a few years, and he still has the stage and opportunity to make good on his early promise.
