With desire and passion for the German national team

Timo Werner has had a reasonably successful weekend. At least for his current circumstances. The striker from Germany was allowed to start again at Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday after making his starting debut this season just a week earlier.

However, that was the end of the good news for the now 28-year-old former national player. Werner, who has exactly zero goals and zero assists in the Premier League this season, was substituted with ten minutes left as Tottenham lost 3-2 at Brighton & Hove Albion.

Things aren’t going any better for Werner’s peers Leon Goretzka and Niklas Süle at the moment. Dortmund’s Süle sat on the bench in his club’s last three competitive games; he was only allowed to play for a few minutes against VfL Bochum. Goretzka, on the other hand, has only come on as a substitute once in six Bundesliga games at FC Bayern – in the 90th minute.

Werner, Süle and Goretzka belong to a generation that was once believed to have done nothing less than save German football. You were born in 1995 or 1996. Just like Joshua Kimmich, Serge Gnabry, Leroy Sané and Julian Brandt.

In June 2018, a few days before the start of the World Cup in Russia, Joshua Kimmich, the unofficial class representative of his generation, sat in a cinema in Watutinki and reported to the international press about his year’s early successes. When he was young, he said, not only did they win almost every tournament, but Timo Werner was also always the top scorer.

Things turned out differently in Russia: The Germans, as defending champions, were eliminated from the World Cup in the preliminary round, and Werner didn’t score a single goal.

What does this have to do with the current national team? Not much anymore. Of those who were once highly praised, national coach Julian Nagelsmann has only called up Kimmich and Gnabry for the two upcoming Nations League games this Friday in Zenica against Bosnia-Herzegovina and on Monday in Munich against Holland.

Gnabry is back for the first time since the defeat against Austria in November last year. “He has managed to stabilize himself in terms of his physical condition, but also his performance,” says Nagelsmann, who made his debut on the sidelines a year ago and for whom the year of birth apparently doesn’t matter. His current squad includes a lot of players who found their way into the national team through the second educational opportunity, so to speak, and have not followed the standardized career path. What they bring with them is not a legendary reputation, but a lot of bite.

This applies:

• for Maximilian Mittelstädt, who was relegated from the Bundesliga with Hertha BSC in 2023.
• for his Stuttgart colleague Deniz Undav, who played for SV Meppen in the fourth-tier regional league when he was 23.
• for Robert Andrich, who had to work his way to the top through the third and second leagues.
• and also for Pascal Gross, who delivered stable performances in England over many years, but was largely ignored in his homeland.

There are also some very young players such as Maximilian Beier, 21, who was not nominated this time, Aleksandar Pavlovic, 20, or the super talents Florian Wirtz, 21, and Jamal Musiala, 21.

Robin Gosens has been re-nominated

The fact that desire and passion have recently been felt again in the national team after leaden years full of failures is closely linked to Nagelsmann’s selection of personnel. Even now, after various absences, the national coach has not resorted to the usual suspects such as Emre Can or Julian Brandt, but has instead nominated Jonathan Burkardt (Mainz 05) and Jamie Leweling (VfB Stuttgart), who have not yet played an international match.

An exception is Robin Gosens, who replaces the injured David Raum. The left-back made his debut in the national team under Joachim Löw, but with his career he is actually a typical Nagelsmann player. Gosens never played in a youth academy and only recommended himself for higher honors through stints abroad in Holland and Italy.

For Gosens, the national team was always the highest goal, just like for Niclas Füllkrug, who only made his debut at the age of 29. The center forward sometimes seems more like a fan of the national team than a player.

Füllkrug is out injured this time, but will be replaced by someone who has a similar career. Tim Kleindienst, who moved to Borussia Mönchengladbach in the summer, was playing in the second division with 1. FC Heidenheim just 17 months ago. He reacted to his first nomination with corresponding euphoria. “There is almost nothing better than being able to experience that,” he said.

By the way, Tim Kleindienst was born in 1995.