Timo Hildebrand

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Timo Hildebrand (born 5 April 1979 in Worms) is a former German football goalkeeper. He was with the VfB Stuttgart 2007 German champion and was at that time also active for the German national team. Most recently he was under contract with Eintracht Frankfurt.

Career

Youth
Hildebrand was born in Worms in Rhineland-Palatinate and grew up in Hofheim in Hesse, a district of Lampertheim. He started playing football at the local FV Hofheim/Ried. At the age of 15, he received the first offers from professional football clubs, including from Cologne, Darmstadt and Mannheim.

VfB Stuttgart
He decided for VfB Stuttgart and belonged to the club between 1994 and 2007, where he was used in the men's area first in the reserve and from 1999/00 also in the Bundesliga team of the Swabians. With Stuttgart, he became runner-up in the 2002/03 season and thus achieved direct qualification for the Champions League. Over the two seasons 2002/03 and 2003/04 Hildebrand remained 884 Bundesliga minutes without goal and broke the Bundesliga record of Oliver Kahn. Hildebrand’s brand has not been surpassed since then.

On 19 December 2006, VfB Stuttgart withdrew an offer to extend Hildebrand’s contract, which expired in June 2007, after Hildebrand had not been prepared to make a decision at that time. In this last season at VfB Hildebrand won the 2006/07 season as vice captain of the German championship and was in the final of the DFB Cup.

FC Valencia
On 4 July 2007 he was finally presented as a new player at Valencia FC. In Spain, Valencia coach Quique Sánchez Flores chose Santiago Cañizares as goalkeeper at the beginning of the 2007/08 season. In the first qualifying match for the Champions League, Hildebrand was therefore on the bench, which was considered a preliminary decision in the area in Valencia. In September, however, he was used in the league game at Betis Sevilla and was since then in most league games under Quique Sánchez Flores in the goal. When Ronald Koeman took over the position of Flores on October 31, 2007, he reverted to Cañizares as the main goalkeeper, who also stood in the box when Hildebrand was not operational due to a back injury. However, this changed when Koeman decided to suspend Cañizares (alongside David Albelda and Miguel Angulo) due to the sporting failures of Valencia in December 2007.

After Hildebrand had established himself as a regular goalkeeper at Valencia, he already won the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Cup competition in his first season in Spain. Valencia prevailed in the semi-finals after a 1:1 in Camp Nou and a 3:2 at home against FC Barcelona. After the 1:1 in the first leg, Hildebrand was unanimously celebrated by the Spanish media as the man of the game. In a brilliant parade statistic of the Spanish newspaper Marca, Hildebran broke