Merlin Röhl's Journey: Behind the Lens at Everton
Merlin Röhl has spent the last two years quietly building a second life at Everton – one that starts with a whistle but often ends with a shutter click.
The 24-year-old German, a towering 6ft 3in presence in midfield, has released a photographic collection titled Behind the Lens: Life with Everton, an intimate album that pulls supporters into the spaces they rarely see. Training ground corridors. Recovery rooms. Dressing-room lulls before the storm. Long journeys when the noise fades and the headphones go on.
For Röhl, the project is about more than aesthetics.
“I think memories,” he said, when asked what draws him to photography. “I can hold on to something that normally just goes away. Sometimes it's just me doing something that I enjoy.”
He talks about it the way some players talk about free-kicks or derby days. Football remains the centre of his world, but not the whole of it.
“I just enjoy playing football so much and I can't do it the whole day,” he said. “So I'm trying next to the football to search for some things where I can feel a little bit like when I am playing football.”
From Freiburg to Finch Farm – and behind the curtain
Everton first brought Röhl in on a season-long loan from Freiburg in 2025, then moved quickly to make the Germany Under-21 international a permanent signing over the summer. At Freiburg, after joining from Ingolstadt in 2022, he racked up 60 appearances, shifting between midfield roles and even filling in at right-back when required. Versatile on the pitch, he has become equally adaptable off it, swapping boots for a camera as easily as he switches positions.
His lens now roams freely around Finch Farm. The album takes fans into the training ground and the dressing room, through the grind of recovery sessions and the quieter, almost forgotten stretches of a working week that usually exist only in passing glimpses on social media.
The pictures track journeys with teammates and the slow, taut build-up to matchdays, home and away. Not the filtered, polished versions, but the in-between moments: a stare out of a bus window, boots lined up in a corridor, a teammate lost in his own thoughts.
When the work is done, the city takes over.
Röhl has used his camera to map Liverpool in the way a newcomer always does – step by step. Walks through parks, along beaches, across streets and into corners of Merseyside that have helped turn a temporary base into something closer to home. The album reflects that, shifting from the blue world of Everton to the broader palette of a city that lives and breathes football but offers far more than a matchday roar.
A release from the grind
For a player working at Premier League intensity, photography has become a pressure valve.
“I had a tough training session in the morning and did all the work that I can do on the pitch,” Röhl explained. “And sometimes for me it's to relax, to just go out, walk a little bit and have some photos.”
No tactics board. No video analysis. Just a walk, a camera and a different kind of focus.
The project is not just personal, either. Some of the proceeds from Behind the Lens: Life with Everton will support the Everton Multi Academy Trust, backed directly by Everton Football Club and Everton in the Community. The midfielder’s off-field passion, then, feeds into the club’s wider work, tying his own story into the fabric of the community around him.
Winning over the dressing room – almost everyone
Of course, pointing a camera into a professional dressing room is not always an easy sell. Footballers guard their private spaces fiercely. The first clicks came with a little tension.
“I think in the beginning it was a little bit kind of a step we needed to overcome,” Röhl admitted. But time, and trust, did the rest. “Now everybody is just like completely fine. I have a good relationship with all my teammates and that helps a lot to get some nice pictures.”
Those relationships are written all over the project: teammates relaxed, unposed, caught in the natural rhythm of their day. The guard drops, and Röhl captures it.
There is, however, one notable absentee from his growing archive.
His manager, David Moyes, has yet to step in front of the midfielder’s camera.
“Maybe I will ask in the future,” Röhl said. “But maybe I'm a little bit scared to affect my starting position.”
Some battles can wait. For now, the Everton midfielder is content to keep shooting everything else – the work, the city, the bonds in the dressing room – building a record of a career and a life that, one day, he’ll be able to hold in his hands and say: that’s what it really looked like.
