You don’t have to watch Noahkai Banks for long to see why so much hype surrounds him.
The 19-year-old centerback stands 6-foot-4 and around 200 pounds and has been a regular starter for Augsburg in Germany’s Bundesliga this season. Born in Hawaii and raised in Germany from a young age, he has been on the U.S. men’s national team radar for a few years now, including the 2023 under-17 World Cup squad.
Last September, he earned his first call-up to the senior squad. Though he didn’t play in that month’s games and hasn’t been called up since, just that one invitation got a lot of attention.
“He is a player that is really young, but with amazing potential,” U.S. manager Mauricio Pochettino said at the time. “He’s really young, but it’s good to see him, because he can go fast to the next level.”
It might be too soon for Banks to make this year’s World Cup team. Then again, the U.S. centerback depth chart isn’t in ideal shape right now, and the 26-player roster might be big enough to have room for him. The starting trio looks likely to be Chris Richards, Tim Ream, and Mark McKenzie, but no one has yet locked down a backup spot.
That adds to the buzz around Banks right now, and he knows it’s out there.
“I don’t read much, to be honest, but my mom always sends everything in the family chat because she uses a lot of Twitter and apps like this,” he said. “It’s cool. It’s a pleasure.”
He said he enjoyed his senior U.S. camp, though he hasn’t had a one-on-one talk with Pochettino yet.
“I’ve already felt the excitement during my training sessions, and I can see the team playing a strong role,“ Banks said. ”The national team boasts some excellent players — [Christian] Pulisic, [Malik] Tillman, Richards — and, of course, a highly experienced coach who has managed some of Europe’s top clubs. …
“It was immediately clear that Pochettino is a world-class coach, but I wouldn’t presume to expect a personal one-on-one during my first training camp,” Banks said.
A touch of homespun warmth certainly won’t hurt his standing with fans, either. But asked if he’s thinking about the World Cup, he quickly tapped the brakes.
“To be honest, I don’t think about the World Cup at the moment, because we have a difficult situation here at my club,” Banks said. “So it’s just about going from game to game here, and then let’s see what happens.”
A sample of his play
He was referring to Augsburg being in the thick of a relegation fight. The Fuggerstädter, whose ownership group includes 76ers part-owner David Blitzer, stand 15th in the 18-team table — the last spot where staying up is guaranteed.
Augsburg fired manager Sandro Wagner in early December after just 12 games. The current boss, Manuel Baum, is an interim who coached just three games before the Bundesliga’s winter break arrived the weekend before Christmas.
That’s enough for any player to handle, not just an 19-year-old. So perhaps you can take Banks’ patience as a sign of maturity.
One of his best games this season so far was his next-to-last one before the winter break, on Dec. 13 at Eintracht Frankfurt.
Amid the hothouse atmosphere of Frankfurt’s 59,500-seat stadium — perhaps you saw the NFL games it hosted in 2023, along with decades of big soccer tournaments — Banks was one of the best players on the field. Though Augsburg lost, 1-0, he had five tackles and six clearances, won eight of the 13 duels he contested, and completed 42 of 47 passes.
It’s worth noting, too, that Banks played mostly as the right centerback in a 3-4-2-1 formation — the same setup the U.S. national team is using heading toward the World Cup. He even would have scored a late equalizer had he not been just barely offside when a corner kick was flicked on to him near the goal line.
The Bundesliga season resumes this weekend, with Banks’ Augsburg coincidentally visiting two other Americans: Borussia Mönchengladbach’s Gio Reyna and Joe Scally (Sunday, 9:30 a.m., ESPN+). There are always lots of games around Europe for U.S. fans to watch, but that one might draw a little extra attention.
It might also remind those fans that Germany has long been the top port of call for U.S. players who move abroad.
Many aspire to play in England, and the doors there are much more open than perhaps they’ve ever been. Still, the Bundesliga’s track record of being a place where Americans cannot just move but actually play and develop remains the best of any top European league.
‘Give them the opportunity’
Eintracht knows this as well as any Bundesliga club, as Philadelphia fans have seen from its preseason tours here in recent years. Former World Cup outside back Timmy Chandler has long called Eintracht home, as did Medford’s Paxten Aaronson for a while.
There’s another young American playmaker in the club’s pipeline in Marvin Dills, and Eintracht tried to sign much-touted Union striker prospect Malik Jakupovic before he decided to turn pro at home first.
“You have to give them the opportunity to grow and develop,” Eintracht sporting director Timmo Hardung said. “And I think this is what some of the clubs, us included, are trying to do: find players with top potential, with top talent, and ready to grow, ready to learn, ready to develop.”
Speaking of the U.S. specifically, he said: “The sportsmanship and the athleticism in the United States is top, and that should produce a lot of players out of the soccer landscape.”
Banks, who started in Augsburg’s youth academy at the under-10 age level, said the club has brought him along well.
“FC Augsburg is a very well-run and family-oriented club,” Banks said. “The club gives me valuable playing time, which is crucial for my development.”
He praised the club’s managing director, Michael Ströll, for having “a clear vision: Young players should make their way into the Bundesliga, and the club is also striving to further develop its playing style — with a focus on more active football.”
U.S. fans might remember that things didn’t go as well there for Ricardo Pepi in 2022, or for Michael Parkhurst in 2013. But Ströll didn’t take the job until after Pepi left, so we’ll see if things are different now. One piece of evidence is that Augsburg reportedly looked at signing 21-year-old Tampa native Santiago Castañeda in the summer.
Banks said he’s also happy off the field at Augsburg, which is just over 70 miles from the town of Dietmannsried, where he grew up. Both towns are in the German state of Bavaria, where the most famous city is Munich.
“I really appreciate being close to my family and the mountains,” Banks said. “Although I haven’t lived abroad yet, it is certainly a goal I hope to pursue in the future.”
If he keeps playing this well, the odds of that will certainly go up. And so will the odds of another national team call-up.
