Getting to Know Hany Mukhtar

If you live in Nashville, there are several things you probably already know about Hany Mukhtar. You probably know he’s Nashville SC’s best player, that he won Major League Soccer’s 2022 MVP Award, that he salutes the home crowd after goals. You might know that in 2021, The Tennessean named him Sportsperson of the Year, even though he lives in the same state as Derrick Henry. You might know that he’s at least as important to NSC as Henry is to the Titans. Last season, Hany scored or assisted 34 of NSC’s 53 goals.

You probably don’t know much about Hany as a person. Here are two short stories to remedy that.

Many mixed-race people will tell you that to be part of two things is to be whole of neither. But South Berlin is built from such eclectic parts that a young Hany Mukhtar — the son of a Sudanese father, Abubakr, and a Polish-German mother, Ursula — always felt he belonged.

South Berlin is where refugees moved after World War II, where Erasmus kids tend to rent flats. A decommissioned airport looms over the Tempelhof district, where the Mukhtar family still lives. The Nazis built it as the symbol of their empire, but since its decommission, it’s served as a center for Syrian refugees. Now its grounds are a public park where families barbecue, immigrants play pickup soccer, people fly kites and tend community gardens — cultural and personal expression set against a dark backdrop. When Hany left his home for the playground, he’d walk through streets that smelled of spitting kebab and sweet Turkish pastries.

Hany joined Hertha Berlin’s soccer academy when he was 6. His parents drove him an hour across Berlin to training, and when he was older, he caught U-Bahn trains himself. Abubakr, the immigrant, was the parent who pushed Hany to max out his potential.

“Anything you do,” he told his son, “do it right. Whether it’s football or cleaning hotel rooms.”

Growing up in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city, Abubakr wanted to play professional soccer. “There’s no money in Sudanese football,” his father had advised him. “Get good grades.” Abubakr listened. In fact, he earned the best grades and got a scholarship to a university in Berlin, where he completed a Ph.D. There in Berlin, he met Ursula.

As a child, Hany could grasp the contours of his father’s story, the work he’d put in to create opportunities for his family. Hany could sense that his life was easier because of Abubakr. He didn’t want to waste the chance his parents offered him. “I didn’t do anything [special] to grow up in Germany,” he says. “I had the privilege.” The immigrant urge to scrap, that grindset, was something his father passed down. “It’s in my DNA,” Hany says.

Where Abubakr pushed and molded, Ursula soothed. In her gentle, lilting, Polish-accented German, Ursula would say her son’s name in singsong. Hallo Ha-ny! Their apartment was a space full of warmth, a place where the teakettle whizzed and a full breakfast — cooked by Ursula — sat on the table alongside fresh bread from local bakeries. Showing up for family mealtime was nonnegotiable.

During Hany’s first season in Nashville, in 2020, he struggled with injuries. To watch Hany play during his first year with Nashville Soccer Club was to read a great writer’s early novels — a clever sentence or metaphor here, a beautiful paragraph there, but all of it in fits and starts.

He’s talented, people whispered, but inconsistent.

During that year, Hany repeatedly called his father. “You made this choice,” Abubakr reminded him. “Work hard. Stay focused. It’ll work out for you.”

Several times in his adult life, Hany has traveled back to Khartoum with Abubakr. He describes the experience as “humbling.” As Hany walked around Khartoum, seeing how people lived compared with Berlin, his father’s decisions felt more immediate, more tangible. Hany understood what it had taken to make it out, how Abubakr set aside his dreams so that one day, his children might realize their own.

On May 1 of last year, kickoff approached at Geodis Park on a cloudless, windless afternoon — the type of spring day that can make you forgive this city for its boiling summers. A sizzle reel flickered across the scoreboard, and Johnny Cash’s voice, like tires on gravel, rumbled from the speakers.

You can run on for a long time

Run on for a long time

Sooner or later, God’ll cut you down

Sooner or later, God’ll cut you down

Fireworks shot from the pitch to the sky, fans screamed, and the referees, the away team, and the Boys in Gold walked out of the tunnel. More smoke, more screams. Hany walked out last. He hopped on the balls of his feet, he prayed. On most game days, he looks to his left and locates Ashley Gowder, his fiancée, in the family section. If he doesn’t see her when the teams walk out, he’ll find her during the game.

On this afternoon — the first home game in the team’s new stadium — when Hany looked for Ashley, he saw Abubakr and Ursula, who’d flown in from Berlin. Abubakr wore a gold No. 10 jersey, “Mukhtar” splashed across the back. When he caught Hany’s eye in warmups, he held out a fist and smiled. Growing up in Khartoum, dreaming of a career as a footballer, perhaps Abubakr could’ve pictured Hany’s life as his own — the No. 10 kit, the MVP award, a city that holds its breath every time you touch the ball.

But Abubakr achieved something just as good. He gave his son the chance to live that life instead.

Hany Mukhtar

In the fall, Hany opened his own soccer academy for Nashville’s youth. It wasn’t so long ago that he was one of them, attending camps and learning from members of Hertha Berlin’s first team. He often thinks back to the opportunities he had as a kid, the chances his parents gave him, and he wants Nashville’s kids to have them too. He recruited a local coach, Pete Kipley, to help it grow. Ashley left her job in the music business in August to help build the academy. Ursula flew to Nashville for the Mukhtar Academy’s first camp, where she registered kids at the front table. At Thanksgiving, at around 9 p.m., the academy received a shipment of 500 Puma balls for camps the next morning. When Pete showed up at the facility, he found Hany, Ashley and Ursula pumping them up.

In October, Hany, Ashley and Pete drove to Lipscomb Academy to watch some academy players in a regional quarterfinal against Hutchison, a team from Memphis. Hany delivered the pregame speech to the Lipscomb girls. He’s a reluctant public speaker, but he’ll do it when it feels important.

“I know you worked hard to get here,” he said. “And this is an important game for you. Just go out there and lay it all out.” He pointed to his seat. “I’ll be cheering for you on the side.”

Lipscomb had earned the one seed, and they were favorites to advance. But the first half passed without a goal. Then the second. The longer Hutchison hung in the game, the more uneasy the crowd grew. The sun had set and the field lights had switched on. The first half of extra time passed, still scoreless. Then the second. Penalties would decide the game. Hany and Ashley had spent all day hanging out with youth players, and Pete was sure they were going to leave. But there Hany sat, gripping the bottom of his seat.

Hutchison shot first. The standard five rounds passed, and the teams remained deadlocked. The sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth rounds passed. At this point, kids who hadn’t volunteered had to take penalties. It was painful, the possibility of being forced to witness the worst moment of a 16-year-old’s life. Relief flooded each girl’s face after she saw her shot find the net. In the 10th round, Hutchison scored their penalty. The Lipscomb player took the long walk from midfield to the spot. She needed to score to extend the match. She approached the ball. She sent it over the bar and into the night.

The Lipscomb girls collapsed in on themselves. Hutchison screamed and ran around the field — the bus ride back to Memphis would be a movie. For the Lipscomb seniors, this was it, the likely end of their careers. Hany turned to Pete and Ashley, embers in his eyes.

“I have to talk to them,” he said.

When Hany was 19 years old, he left Berlin to sign for Benfica, a team in Lisbon, the most storied club in Portugal. Benfica regularly played in the Champions League, and Hany dreamed of playing on the game’s brightest stage. The move didn’t work out, and Hany didn’t play much. He lived in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, but he couldn’t speak the language. He was lonely, away from home for the first time, missing the warmth of Ursula and Abubakr’s flat in South Berlin.

That summer, he played for Germany in the 2015 Under-20 World Cup in New Zealand. In the quarterfinals, Germany held a 1-0 lead against Mali. In the 56th minute, they earned a penalty, and the team chose Hany to take it. The previous summer, he’d scored the game-winning goal in the Under-19 Euro final. But the lost season in Lisbon weighed heavily. He missed. Two minutes later, Mali scored an equalizer and went on to win, eliminating Germany on penalties. By then, Hany had been subbed off.

So he knew what the Lipscomb girls felt. And he chose to share the story of one of his worst moments with them. Less than a minute after the match ended, Hany walked purposefully across the field. As he approached Lipscomb’s bench, the girls lay on the grass, devastated, flooded in an ocean of their own tears. “I know what this feels like, personally,” he told them. “When it came down to me, I missed a penalty in the U-20 championships.”

“But in soccer, there is always another opportunity. There is still another day.”

In the moment, nothing could’ve made what happened OK. But months later, some of those girls still talk about that speech.

About a week later, Hany won the 2022 MLS MVP award, for which he gave an acceptance speech. When he stepped down from the lectern, he found Ashley.

“That was nothing,” he said of the speech, “compared to the Lipscomb Academy girls.”