AOn a Saturday in January, when it is cold in Munich, Joachim Löw is sitting with a woolen blanket in the FC Bayern soccer arena and watching the Bundesliga match against Hoffenheim when a boy with thin legs is substituted on. He sees how the boy, who is 17 years old, is immediately hit with the ball by his teammates from Munich. He sees how the boy almost never loses the ball. He sees how the boy guides the ball with the side of his shoe and caresses the sole of the shoe. He sees the boy kissing the ball with his feet.
Later, according to the Bild newspaper, Löw speaks to the boy personally. He wants to convince him to play for the German national team in the future. And if you fast forward to the third preliminary round match of the EM from this Saturday in January, you can probably say that the excursion in winter saved the national coach from the next embarrassment in summer.
A goal is missing when Löw comes on this Wednesday evening in Munich Jamal Musiala, now 18 years old. Hungary leads 2-1. The live table reveals: Germany is bottom of the table – and thus eliminated. In the 82nd minute, Musiala runs on the grass with his thin legs. In the 84th minute he grabs the ball on the baseline and pushes with a quick step into the penalty area. There are now three defenders from Hungary in front of him.
Self-confidence? Confidence!
He dances out the first with a body illusion, looks in the middle – and discovers the gap that none of his teammates has yet discovered in this game. Five seconds later, Leon Goretzka shoots the ball into the goal. “I was really happy,” says Musiala, as he sits in front of a camera in the catacombs of the arena after his first few minutes in the European Championship and answers the reporter’s questions. He tells how Löw told him before coming on that he should dare to play with the ball. So he dared to do something. “I came in with Confidence.”
When Jamal Musiala speaks, you occasionally hear an English between the many German words. For example, he doesn’t say self-confidence, but rather confidence. This is because he was born in Stuttgart, but moved to England with his German mother and Nigerian father in 2010, where he was noticed by the Chelsea FC scouts. He developed on the island – in a club, but also in an association. At the age of 13 he played for the junior national team. So it went on. But then he switched to FC Bayern. And then he spoke to Loew.
“Mr. Löw worked out and analyzed my playing style as well as my strengths and weaknesses very well and clearly,” said Musiala in an interview with the Sportschau. That was in February when he had just decided that he wanted to play for Germany and not for England. “At this meeting, Mr. Löw showed me a very clear path for me in the national team.”
And so it is a nice coincidence that this path leads back to England in his first major tournament: to the large Wembley Stadium. “It’s going to be a cool game,” says Jamal Musiala, who, unlike his coach, has nothing to lose. In the first two preliminary round matches, Joachim Löw did not nominate him for the squad. It was more of an act of desperation when he replaced him on Wednesday. But he should know: The only thing that despairs about Jamal Musiala is those who want to steal the ball from him.
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