Peter brings energy to Obstadt’s Switch game

Playing in Obstadt since 2019: Timo Peter
imago photo / photo booth

He is someone who has seen the world and experienced a lot. This is what it sounds like when people talk about Timo Pitter in Aubstadt. Because professionally, the 30-year-old wing works as a project manager in a company that manufactures large-scale photovoltaic systems and operates mostly internationally. He currently works in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is able to do this thanks to his international degree, which he earned during a five-year stay in the United States.

But the technically skilled player also plays a special role on the field. In the team of coach Viktor Kleinens, he is especially distinguished by his intelligence in the game, as he anticipates the ball and takes it to the goal as quickly as possible. The former US scholarship holder has made 22 of 23 appearances this season since starting, only coming on as a substitute in the 0-1 draw at Türkgücü Munich. A circumstance showing that Pitter is not only one of the project managers on the field at TSV Aubstadt, but also in action.

However, not least because of the large workload, the question arises whether a demanding full-time job and at the same time a leadership role in a regional league team such as TSV Aubstadt are at all compatible. Peter explains it. “Being a semi-professional certainly works in terms of effort along with the job,” he asserts. Is he earning a living from it these days? “The question is how,” replies Peter, who had to learn early on that security is important on the fast-moving field of soccer.

Studies in the United States

Recently, the Schweinfurt native has already held every stature a footballer can have in his career: from a heavily invested amateur footballer to a professional footballer to a retired player. Because at only 25, the lower Franconian had already hung up his boots because his job was preferred to sport. “The whole thing cannot be reconciled with the effort I put into playing football,” he explains of his decision.

Back to the beginnings of football. Oberschwarzacher played at FC Gerolzhofen and at 1. FC Schweinfurt 05, where he first reached the regional league, before the young man went out into the big world – to the USA. At Creighton University, the 19-year-old earned an economics scholarship in 2012 and played as a scholarship holder for the university’s Creighton Bluejays team before moving to Major League Soccer’s FC Dallas through a popular draft pick in the United States managed. Peter was allowed to call himself a professional. “There was a difference between daily training and traveling across the country for matches,” says Peter. Back in Germany, the eloquent Raki graduated in the summer of 2017. Peter had arrived home with a deserved title, but without any professional experience and wanted to “gain a foothold professionally first.”

He said and did. In terms of football, he was hired by sixth-division side SV Euerbach/Kützberg before moving to TSV Aubstadt in 2019. “I needed conditions that would give me freedom to work and play football for a maximum of one day a week,” he says. The striker found these conditions in Obstadt. “I can play at the highest level for the Bavarian amateur and get close to my 23-year-old self.”

It is a win-win situation. Last but not least, Coach Kleinens rarely talks about regular places or regular formations, but likes to stress that he can’t do without his leading player in right midfield. Peter, the son of a schoolmaster, is the driving force for Obstadt between penalty areas. Load control is only possible with late replacements. “When the cheese is eaten,” he says.

The fact that TSV is playing at the top again this season doesn’t surprise the world – on the contrary. “We are at our strongest when we bring our best virtues and hard work to the field,” he said. Pitter is both at the same time: a fighter and a technician. In his job as project manager for photovoltaic systems and at TSV Aubstadt, he brings energy to the switch game.