National football team: Kroos on Musiala and Wirtz: We will have to carry ourselves

Former world champion Toni Kroos has also intervened in the debate triggered by Dietmar Hamann about Jamal Musiala’s playing style and defended his former national team colleague. “Speaking of wrong-way drivers. Felix, you wanted to talk about Didi Hamann, did I hear that correctly?” Kroos said in his podcast “Einfach mal Luppen” to his brother Felix in a transition to the topic of the national team.

Football Germany should be “very happy” about Musiala (21) and Florian Wirtz, who is the same age, said the long-time Real Madrid professional, who ended his career in the summer. Germany had been “longing for years” for such players. “They will have to carry us in the next few years, they will have to win us games in the next few years.” Both are professionals “who can turn an apparently harmless situation into a dangerous one – all by themselves.”

Former professional Hamann (51), known for his polarizing statements, had described Musiala in his Sky column as, among other things, a “lone player” and “often a solo entertainer.” From “Bayern’s point of view,” he would immediately swap Musiala for Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz if he could: “I would do it tomorrow.” Hamann has since put the criticism of “probably the best dribbler in Europe or the world” into perspective.

Kroos also celebrates “Wusiala”

Wirtz has “a kind of ‘fuck you’ mentality” and is in fact “a bit more straightforward” and “holds his head up again in the last situation,” said Kroos. Musiala, on the other hand, has “the advantage that for him a one-on-two situation is perhaps like one-on-one for others. Jamal is not afraid when two people come or one is very close and can then solve the problem with his quality.”

It is a “good prerequisite that they are not completely the same in order to play together,” said Kroos about the duo celebrated in the media as “Wusiala.” “If Germany wants to win titles in the future, then they will need good tournaments from Musiala and Wirtz in the coming years to have a chance of doing so.”

Kroos sees the two successful Nations League matches against Hungary (5-0) and the Netherlands (2-2) as a “first good step”. Until the 2026 World Cup, the main thing now is “that the individual players continue to develop” and that the team structure becomes “stable”.