Kevin Kampl: From Champions League Star to Majorcan Farmer
Kevin Kampl was never the loudest man on the pitch. No wild celebrations, no constant gesturing to the cameras. Just a neat, clever midfielder who quietly stitched games together for nearly a decade at the top level.
Now he spends his days stitching rows of melons and tomatoes into the soil of Majorca.
From Champions League nights to Majorcan fields
Born in Germany, capped by Slovenia, Kampl built almost his entire career in the Bundesliga. Greuther Fürth gave him a platform, Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Dortmund sharpened his game, but RB Leipzig became his footballing home.
From 2017 to 2026, he was part of Leipzig’s rise from ambitious upstart to established Champions League regular. He saw the club grow, the stadium fill, the expectations harden. For eight and a half years, the Red Bull Arena really was, as he later put it, his “living room”.
Then, suddenly, it was over.
In early January 2026, Kampl and Leipzig agreed to terminate his contract. No farewell tour, no drawn‑out speculation. Just a clean break between a club legend and the team he helped define.
The reason cut far deeper than football.
Double tragedy, brutal choice
Back home in Slovenia, Kampl’s world had collapsed. His brother died. Months later, his father passed away as well. Two blows in quick succession, leaving little room to breathe, let alone to press and probe in midfield.
The 35-year-old reached a point where the daily demands of elite football simply no longer matched the weight he was carrying. So he walked away. Not to another league or a quieter club, but out of the game altogether.
He later summed it up with a stark honesty: he’d had a “pretty s*** year – there is no other word for it.” No sugar-coating, no cliché about “challenges” or “journeys”. Just a brutal assessment of a period that ripped through his life.
A different kind of harvest
Today, Kampl’s office is a farm in Majorca. The boots have been swapped for work shoes caked in soil, the roar of the Red Bull Arena replaced by the hum of insects and the rustle of leaves in the island breeze.
“We have honeydew melons, watermelons, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and plenty more,” he told Bild, painting a picture that feels a world away from Champions League floodlights. “They all grow like crazy here. The olive oil we make here tastes delicious.”
There is a calm to his new existence. A rhythm. Seed, water, wait, harvest. No fixture list, no transfer window, no constant noise. Just the slow, steady work of making things grow.
“Life has to go on, even though it has been very difficult to accept everything that has happened,” he admitted. “But the peace and quiet we have on Majorca has done us all a lot of good.”
The sentence lands with the weight of someone who has seen enough of both worlds to know which one he needs right now.
Leipzig still in his blood
For all the distance – emotional, geographical, professional – Kampl has not cut the cord with Leipzig. Far from it.
“I always keep up to date with what RB Leipzig are doing, and I’ll continue to do so,” he said. Old habits, it seems, die hard. The club that gave him his longest spell and his greatest nights still tugs at him from northern Germany while he tends to his crops in the Balearic sun.
“I will also be in the city a lot, so who knows what the future might bring.”
That last line hangs in the air. It is not a promise of a coaching role or a boardroom position, not a hint at a return to the dugout. Just an open door, left deliberately ajar. Football has taken enough from him to justify a clean break. Yet it clearly gave him enough that he cannot quite let it go.
A farewell that sounded like home
When he walked away, Kampl addressed the Leipzig supporters with the kind of message that explains why they still talk about him as one of their own.
“Dear fans, first and foremost, I would like to thank you for the eight and a half wonderful years that I was able to play here. You gave me a home,” he said.
“I felt so comfortable from day one, also with my family. It [the Red Bull Arena] was my living room. You have always had my back. We have celebrated successes, we have overcome lows – but always as a unit. I am extremely grateful to you for always seeing me as one of you.”
It read less like a standard farewell statement and more like someone closing the door on a chapter of his life he never expected to end this way.
Now, as melons and peppers “grow like crazy” under the Majorcan sun, the question lingers: when he next walks back into that “living room” in Leipzig, will he be visiting as a guest, or returning in a new role to the club that still feels like home?
