Karim Adeyemi

Karim Adeyemi has been with Borussia Dortmund since 2022. “As a young boy, I was fascinated by the high-tempo football the Black and Yellows played. That’s why it quickly became clear to me that I wanted to go to BVB as soon as I learned of the interest from Dortmund.” On Matchday 19 of the 2022/23 season, he achieved a top speed of 36.7 km/h in the game against Freiburg – one of the highest speeds since that tracking of that stat began in 2011. And there could be more to come. “I’ve broken my own record, but very few people know that. It was the Champions League. Mathias Kolodziej (head of sports science at BVB [ed.]) evaluates all the data. He wrote something on a post-it note and put it in my locker. It said ‘37.3’. I asked him about it, and he confirmed that number. 37.28 km/h in the game against Real Madrid,” he told BORUSSIA members’ magazine in December 2024.

“I like to use my speed a lot,” he said, describing his playing style. He thrives on the shoulder of the last defender, looking to exploit his speed in the final third and use his pace to go past opponents. In the 2024/25 season, he was involved in a total of 21 goals (12 goals, nine assists). Those are pretty impressive numbers given his limited minutes due to injury – on 1 October 2024, he injured his thigh while bagging a hat-trick against Celtic Glasgow, and only celebrated his comeback two and a half months later. In terms of stats per 90 minutes, he was almost as regularly involved in goals as the outstanding Serhou Guirassy.

Karim Adeyemi often finds his best form at home in particular. “It's crazy to play here. Every away team is thinking: ‘what kind of crazy fans do they have here?!’ Feeling that force is special. Whenever I come here, I get goosebumps. And when the fans welcome us with their songs even during the warmup, it’s incredible. There is no sicker, no louder stadium than ours. I’m very happy to have a stand like that behind me.”

Karim Adeyemi was born in Munich on 18 January 2002. a Nigerian father and a Romanian mother. In his childhood, he played basketball and volleyball as well as football. At the age of eight, he joined the Bayern Munich U9s, but just two years later, he returned to his first club, TSV Forstenried. From 2012 to 2018 he was at the academy of SpVgg Unterhaching.

Austria's perennial title contenders Salzburg then secured the services of the highly talented young attacker, who was 16 years old at the time, for a handsome transfer fee. At the same time, he was also eligible to play for Salzburg's cooperation partner FC Liefering in the Austrian second division, and he immediately earned himself a regular place in the starting line-up. On 20 February 2020, he made his first team debut as a substitute in the Europa League away game against Eintracht Frankfurt (a 4-1 defeat). His big breakthrough came in 2021/22, when the young attacker scored five times in his first three top-flight games, as well as in the important Champions League play-off first leg against Bröndby IF. With 19 goals in 29 games, he was the top scorer in the Austrian Bundesliga. In the UEFA Champions League, he scored three times in the group stage, helping Salzburg to reach the round of 16 in the competition for the first time. He waved goodbye to Austria with 33 goals in 91 matches in the top division and 15 goals in 35 games in the second tier.

He made his debut for the German senior national on 5 September 2021, scoring in injury time in the World Cup qualifier against Armenia to make it 6-0. He was a member of the squad at the 2022 World Cup, but was not used. It was different in the Nations League, where Adeyemi was on the pitch in all matches from the quarter-finals in 2025. On top of that, he won the European Championships with the German U21 national team in 2021.