Halil Altıntop

Halil Altıntop — Biography

Born on 8 December 1982 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, ten minutes after his twin brother Hamit Altıntop, and coming from a family that had emigrated from Malatya, Halil Altıntop is a retired footballer and coach who holds both Turkish and German citizenship. He began playing with amateur clubs in his hometown before moving to Bundesliga side Kaiserslautern in 2003, where he finished the 2005-06 season as the league's second-highest scorer with 20 goals, behind Miroslav Klose.

At the start of the 2006-07 season he joined Schalke 04, where his brother also played, and later turned out for Eintracht Frankfurt, Trabzonspor, Augsburg and Slavia Prague. While at Augsburg he became the most-capped Turkish player in Bundesliga history when he made his 250th league appearance on 30 November 2013, overtaking Yıldıray Baştürk. Having turned down an offer to play for Germany, he chose to represent Turkey, making his senior debut on 30 March 2005 against Georgia and featuring in World Cup qualifying campaigns in 2006 and 2010 and European Championship qualifiers in 2008 and 2012.

After retiring as a player in June 2018, Altıntop moved into coaching, first joining Markus Weinzierl's staff at VfB Stuttgart, then serving as head coach of TSV Schwaben Augsburg in 2019, before taking up youth-development roles at Bayern Munich from 2020 and rising to sporting director of FC Bayern Campus in 2023 -- a post he left on 31 July 2024.