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The signing of Makoto Hasebe in the summer of 2014 was not a sure-fire success. The then Frankfurt CEO Heribert Bruchhagen and his sports director Bruno Hübner had no doubts about the quality of the Japanese, who had just been relegated from the Bundesliga with 1. FC Nürnberg. The crucial question for both of them, however, was whether the 30-year-old wasn’t already too old.