It is known how the story ended on Saturday.

But how it started, maybe not like that, even if Robin Gosens has already told it one time or another.

It is a story the likes of which no longer exists in football Germany, the land of youth academies and performance centers, the land about which Mehmet Scholl once roughly said that the young players could "run and fart 18 systems backwards".

Christian Kamp

Sports editor.

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    It has nothing to do with footbonauts or VR glasses, but with "Buggi" and the "Blues". The “Blues” was the pub where the evenings came to an end for Gosens and his teammates like “Buggi” when they were playing at VfL Rhede when they were young. And it often took a little longer. Nothing special, actually, until that day after a slumped evening when everything changed. “It was the moment when everything started,” says Gosens in the WDR-2 podcast “Simply Football”: Away game in Kleve, Rhede wins 3-1, he scores once and prepares two goals. "After the game," says Gosens, "a Dutchman stands in front of me and says: Do you have a minute?"

    On Saturday Robin Gosens scored one goal again and prepared two, this time there is no unknown Dutchman in front of him, who turned out to be a scout for Vitesse Arnhem, one camera after the other, and Gosens is supposed to tell the whole world how he did it has in the 4: 2 against Portugal and above all: how he feels.

    "Emotional chaos"

    When Gosens talks about it, he seems to be carried away in an incredulous way by everything he is experiencing: an “emotional chaos”, “magical”, “gigantic” - ultimately like in a dream. “You can tweak me,” he said to one of the reporters, “but I don't believe it either.” As if Gosens was one of those guys who smuggled himself onto a team picture, only this time nobody notices it, even when the game runs, and also not when Gosens is exhausted after 62 minutes and is celebrated with chants.

    No, Robin Gosens, soon to be 27 years old, professional footballer at Atalanta Bergamo, was in exactly the right place on Saturday in the Munich arena. In his only ninth international match, he decisively helped the German team to re-measure the playing field at this European Championship. A few minutes are enough in the second half to get an idea of ​​this. At first it is a scene at your own corner flag, not a particular threat, but Gosens does not throw himself into this duel with a Portuguese, he catapults himself into it, a straddle that thunders the ball with a force up to the middle rank as if it were a shot on goal.

    In the podcast you can hear Gosens say the beautiful sentence: “Sometimes only the good old scythe helps.” Shortly afterwards, Gosens holds his adductors on the pitch, it doesn't look good, but there is no substitution.

    "Fortunately, the coach left me on it a bit", Gosens will say later, "so I can still do the hut." It is the decisive 4: 1, prepared by Joshua Kimmich, and Gosens, just the Grim Reaper, hits Portugal as a header monster.

    Over the wings to success

    It is also an emblematic scene for the entire second European Championship game of the Germans. For the national coach's plan to achieve success over the wings, for the 3-4-3 formation, in which the two outside players are of crucial importance. So for everything that didn't work out against France, but now leads to opportunities again and again.