Such a nice relay competition, you learn that in the children's soccer course, loosens up every training session.
And what works for the little ones is still fun when you get to the top.
And so there was cheering, cheering and cheering during the training of the national team on Thursday morning in Herzogenaurach.
Christian Kamp
Sports editor.
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Three teams were asked to run through a small course, the difficulty in the end was to sink the ball, after everyone had played it once, with a direct contact in a bin the size of a garbage can. But even with older children, things like that don't always go right, and so in the end one was angry. "Have you finished yet?" Joshua Kimmich called in protest in the direction of the group around Emre Can, who were already celebrating themselves as winners. It didn't help, the others smirked, Kimmich and his team had to go downstairs: pushups.
Admittedly, Kimmich was more playfully angry that he kicked a hole in the bin was not to be feared. But at the same time this training miniature also fit into the big picture that the football nation of Kimmich has and should have: that this dynamic, wiry guy of 26 years has hated nothing more than to lose since he was a child. Be it with the “Mensch ärgere dich nicht” at the family table, in the training relay, or on the real football field against the big boys. So it was no wonder that Kimmich looked grimly at the 1-0 defeat against France on Tuesday. “The bottom line was that it wasn't enough because we were too harmless at the front,” he said, and: “We missed taking the risk completely.” But because Kimmich is also nobody who accepts a limit that moves away from it would dictate to otherswhat is feasible, he turned his gaze to what is now to come. “We saw that we definitely have the level to keep up with the top teams. Now we have to show in the next few games that we are a favorite too. "
When the German national team meets Portugal this Saturday in the Munich arena (6 p.m., live in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ARD and MagentaTV), there is already a lot going on at this European championship, which Kimmich puts very precisely has what he wants: the title. “We can't always hide and say that we have so much quality, but somehow we don't bring it to the pitch,” he said in a ZDF documentary that aired two weeks ago. "Now we are in demand." In the same documentary, Joachim Löw can be seen, in a dignified ambience the national coach of Kimmich raves: that Germany can be happy with a player like him, that Kimmich is showing himself in the big games - and that he is in the center of the square "embodies thingsas I imagine it to be ”. Löw does not say that in this article, but others like Oliver Kahn or Hasan Salihamidzic: that Kimmich has what it takes to become the best in the world in sixth position, to shape world football. You can also understand it this way: sooner or later, Kimmich will be about the king's position in the national team.
On Tuesday, against France, you saw Kimmich moved to the edge of the field. Against the world champion, he should ensure the right balance as a flank player, on the one hand defensively for stability, but also offensively for accents, repeatedly pushing towards the baseline. Kimmich tried hard, you could see that. But what you couldn't see or feel: the conviction that Kimmich's game usually emanates, this urgency that also radiates on his teammates, the prudent looks in all directions, the many small things that he does right and the often big ones Have an effect. Kimmich had his job, and he bit himself into it, but it was as if he was missing something: influence, the feeling of being able to usurp what was happening. Respectively.