Ahen most of the teammates were still jostling around Robert Lewandowski, Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka turned around again. They didn’t laugh, they didn’t talk. They walked almost shoulder to shoulder through the center circle in Munich, where the Dynamo Kiev football players lined up after the penalty that Lewandowski had just shot into the goal. And when you saw from the stands in this 13th minute of the game how Kimmich and Goretzka reacted to the 1-0 for their team, you suspected: That’s not it yet.
On Wednesday evening, FC Bayern won 5-0 against Dynamo Kiev in the preliminary round of the Champions League. Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka, 26 years old, once again demonstrated why they are so special as a duo. With their passports and position shifts, they initiated move by move. With their announcements and commands, they steered player by player. They dominated midfield in Munich, where they have been playing side by side for almost two years.
Many stories have been told about Kimmich and Goretzka since then. How they won the Champions League under Hansi Flick. Just as they immediately became the heart of the most successful German soccer team under coach Julian Nagelsmann. But there is one story that has not been told that often: how their common story began. When Kimmich and Goretzka were warming up in Munich for the game against Kiev on Wednesday, Horst Hrubesch, 70 years old, answered the cell phone in Hamburg.
He is in charge of the HSV’s youth work. But he can also say a lot about Kimmich and Goretzka from a distance. On the one hand, because as the European champion from 1980 and hero figure of German football, according to industry logic, he can say something about almost anything. On the other hand, because he has often seen them play together in midfield. No wonder: he used to be one of the first to set them up next to each other.
One on whom the future of FC Bayern depends: Leon Goretzka
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Image: Huebner
In his 16 years as the junior coach of the German Football Association, Hrubesch has seen many players come and go. But some were just different. For example Kimmich and Goretzka. He calls such players “self-indulgence”. Like a sure-fire success. Because: “You know exactly what you get from them – and usually you get even more in the end.” Sure, that has to do with tactics and technology, but Hrubesch doesn’t want to talk much about that.
“You see your environment”
There is another reason why Kimmich and Goretzka were so important to him in the U-19 and U-21 national teams, he says – and then starts a mini-lecture that goes like this: “The security that you have Bring it with you, it helps the coach, but above all the team. They see their surroundings. You can see where to help. They don’t look away. You can take your teammates with you. You can tell when something isn’t working. You just have a feeling for it. They are independent, clear-thinking types. “
Hrubesch remembers one sentence by Joshua Kimmich particularly well. He no longer knows exactly what year he said it, but how he said it he has not forgotten to this day. On the sidelines he wanted to point out a mistake to Kimmich. He hadn’t even spoken when he interrupted him and said: “Quiet, coach, I’ll do it.” And of course he did that too. So be it with Kimmich. But that is also how it is with Goretzka. You are already doing it. You can see that in Munich in the first few weeks of the new season.
Together with Thomas Müller, you are the engine of an eleven who have won nine out of ten games and will play against Eintracht Frankfurt this Sunday (5.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and at DAZN). They go so well together because they can be so different on the lawn. Kimmich prefers to let himself fall in order to influence the game from behind with his passes – specialty: chipball. Goretzka prefers to storm along with his great shot and header technique to influence the game from the front.
Best earner in Kader
“They understood the game,” says Hrubesch, “but they also understood what is important in normal life.” During the months of the pandemic, soccer Germany got to know its national players Kimmich and Goretzka differently. They founded the “WeKickCorona” donation platform, with which they quickly raised more than five million euros. You recently transferred 500,000 euros from this platform to the UNICEF vaccination campaign.
It is also because of this good image that FC Bayern likes to decorate itself with them. Those responsible at the club invested a lot of money this summer to extend the contracts of Kimmich (until 2025) and Goretzka (2026). You are now one of the top earners in the squad – and therefore automatically one of those on whom future success will depend.
It is a realization of the pandemic that FC Bayern cannot and does not want to afford the most talented players at the moment. And because he doesn’t want to lower his own demands, that increases the expectations of those who are already there. Kimmich and Goretzka accept that. “Our job, mine and Joshua’s, is to transfer our idea to the team in the dressing room,” said Goretzka recently.
“The greed for a title, to want to win every game, no matter against whom, no matter when and in which scenario, then that is also attractive for other players.” That is a factor that FC Bayern secretly takes into account in its investments Has. A team with Kimmich and Goretzka as leaders could not only be attractive for its own players, but also for strangers.
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