National player: The club of the rare thousand

In our “Green Space” column, Oliver Fritsch, Christof Siemes, Stephan Reich and Anna Kemper take turns writing about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of ZEIT am Wochenend, issue 41/2024.

Twice, says the new center forward Borussia Mönchengladbachhe ignored the national coach on his cell phone because he didn’t know his number, couldn’t know him. When Tim Kleindienst finally answered the third time, it was “one of the nicest phone calls I’ve ever had.” It really doesn’t happen every day that a 29-year-old who was playing with Heidenheim in the second division just over a year ago gets a chance at the top. And now he can fill the gap, the “gap” is left to Niclas Füllkrug, who himself rose from a late call-up to the center forward of the hearts, but is now unable to take part in the international matches against Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Netherlands due to an injury.

The German national football team played its first international match on April 5, 1908; In Basel, without any coach, she lost 3:5 against Switzerland. In the following 116 years, almost a thousand men stepped in front of the ball for Germany: from Schalke’s Rüdiger Abramczik to Felix Zwolanowski, right winger for Fortuna Düsseldorf, who was used under Sepp Herberger against Slovakia and Yugoslavia in 1940. From Leipzig’s Paul Matthes, born in March 1879 and therefore the oldest of all national players, to Youssoufa Moukoko, still the youngest current national player (and World Cup participant, even if his career seems to be over somehow at less than twenty years old).

Only just under a thousand in more than a century – it is an illustrious, even elite circle. But at the moment one can get the impression that it has never been as easy to break into this circle as it is today. As soon as a team was halfway found for the home European Championships, another renovation was needed. Anyone who can only walk halfway straight this fall and knows roughly where the gate is can expect a call from an unknown person, who then turns out to be Julian Nagelsmann.

Jamie Leweling from Stuttgart and Jonathan Burkardt from Mainz also suddenly had lightning careers. Mainz coach Bo Henriksen had just pushed his goalgetter into the spotlight with a saying: “Germany must have the best strikers in the world if Jonny isn’t there,” he said after Burkardt scored twice in the game against St. Pauli. And then the phone rang for the 24-year-old: he was allowed to storm for Germany in place of the injured Kai Havertz.

Overall, the current squad looks like a mixed bag in which everyone can try their luck. Because even those who almost pass for veterans, like Groß, Anton, Andrich, Führich, Undav or Mittelstädt, are latecomers who, until recently, would hardly have expected to be able to break into the club of the rare thousand.

Of course, this random array of soldiers of fortune is a snapshot, mainly due to the absence of seven regulars who were more or less injured. Maybe this is the new normal, as it reflects various developments in top-level football. The fact that many established stars are already ailing early in the season and are missing the international matches because they first have to recover and regenerate confirms those who have long been warning about over-stressing the staff. In addition, the Nations League, even in its fourth edition, is still an unimportant tournament. As a regular, you can treat yourself to a break from art or have it prescribed by the trainer so that you are fit when it really comes down to something.

And perhaps it is this ruthlessness of the company that means that great football careers are no longer linear and can end up with a three-digit number of international matches. Today, anyone who misses out due to injury or just a dip in form may never make it back to the top. At the same time, even average kickers are so well trained that the gap between top players and followers is no longer large. Even a third and fourth division player like Deniz Undav can reach the highest level comparatively late.

You can find the fast-paced tree-change-you game in the national team entertaining. But at some point it doesn’t matter who’s kicking; Identification is no longer created by individual players with whom one has been with through thick and thin for years and decades, but only by the pink jersey that everyone wears on the pitch and in the stands. But maybe that’s just the sentimentality of an aging columnist socialized with Maier, Müller, Netzer and Beckenbauer. Statistics say that even among the rare thousand, the one-hit wonder is the rule: the 17 national players who have played a hundred or more international matches are compared to more than 250 who have only worn the eagle once.