Contents
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Page 1Joshua Kimmich and the lost image
Page 2″The feeling of trust has obviously been broken”
In the most intimate scene in this film about Joshua Kimmich, Joshua Kimmich is not even in the picture. Instead, you see a shelf with some files, a candle and a few shoe boxes. Kimmich is video calling the film’s author, he has pushed his laptop to the side so that he himself is out of sight. So that you don’t see how he is struggling to keep his composure.
A few moments earlier, Kimmich spoke about how he experienced that phase during the coronavirus pandemic when he was primarily reported on as an unvaccinated professional footballer. “It was a really brutal time,” he says. “When you have friends who tell you that if you had been vaccinated, there would be fewer…” Kimmich’s voice breaks and he turns the camera to collect himself. If he, Kimmich, had been vaccinated, fewer people would have died, his friend said. “If you don’t have a family, you can fall apart.”
You see professional footballers very often on television, but you have far less often the feeling of learning much about them or even their emotional state. For this reason alone, it is remarkable how Joshua Kimmich now talks again about those weeks at the end of 2021 in a ZDF film.
Joshua Kimmich: Leader and driveris the name of this portrait, which will be shown late on Saturday evening at 11.45 p.m. and is already available in the station’s media library. It is about Kimmich’s footballing upbringing, his successes, his fatherhood. And also about his relationship with FC Bayern during the vaccination debate about him. The club comes off badly. The timing is also interesting: suddenly football fans are talking about Kimmich’s relationship with Bayern, no longer about how he defends against Switzerland.
The author Jan Mendelin was able to accompany Kimmich with his camera for several years. You swim alongside Kimmich with sharks in the Maldives, go on safari with him in Tanzania, trudge through the mountains with him and follow him through his unfinished house at the topping-out ceremony. It’s not constantly exciting, but it does give a few private insights into the life and thoughts of a national player, which is something that quite a few people are interested in during the European Championships. Mendelin paints the picture of a fairly down-to-earth man, for example when he shows him watching the 2022 World Cup final with his parents, lugging boxes before the move or at his wedding.
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All of this also creates empathy for someone who has lost a little control over his own reputation in recent years. And perhaps Kimmich can regain a little of it through this film.
Many people saw Joshua Kimmich as a boss in midfield, someone who leads and directs, a world-class key player for Bayern and the national team. Because of his talent, but also because of his exemplary work ethic – his ambition, which evidently made him and others better. You can hear about this ambition again in the ZDF film, for example from Alexander Zorniger, who coached him at RB Leipzig: “Never tell Jo: you can’t do it. That’s like a red rag to a bull, then he’ll really go for it.” Or from Matthias Sammer, who says that Joshua Kimmich is “consumed by ambition”. Sammer, who himself doesn’t have a reputation for being easily satisfied, means this very appreciatively.
In the most intimate scene in this film about Joshua Kimmich, Joshua Kimmich is not even in the picture. Instead, you see a shelf with some files, a candle and a few shoe boxes. Kimmich is video calling the film’s author, he has pushed his laptop to the side so that he himself is out of sight. So that you don’t see how he is struggling to keep his composure.
A few moments earlier, Kimmich spoke about how he experienced that phase during the coronavirus pandemic when he was primarily reported on as an unvaccinated professional footballer. “It was a really brutal time,” he says. “When you have friends who tell you that if you had been vaccinated, there would be fewer…” Kimmich’s voice breaks and he turns the camera to collect himself. If he, Kimmich, had been vaccinated, fewer people would have died, his friend said. “If you don’t have a family, you can fall apart.”
