It’s getting bigger and bigger
The DFB has a problem that it can do little about
June 14, 2026 – 10:16 a.mReading time: 6 minutes
The German team is full of stars at the World Cup. But there could have been a few more.
Germany’s first group game at the World Cup in the USA, Mexico and Canada is on Sunday at 7 p.m. National coach Julian Nagelsmann’s team wants to score their first points against Curaçao.
Kenan Yıldız and Can Uzun have already played their first game. For the two Turkish national players, things had already started half a day beforehand. Things could have gone differently. It could have been good that Uzun and Yıldız also played for Germany against Curaçao. However, both chose Turkey. Yıldız in autumn 2023, Uzun six months later. Turkey was enticing with a place in the squad for the 2024 European Championship, but the DFB was not at that point. Sports director Rudi Völler and managing director Andreas Rettig visited Uzun’s family so that he could decide on Germany. But the wish was not fulfilled. Today Yıldız and Uzun would probably be an integral part of the German team. National coach Julian Nagelsmann could really use her.
In the video | Türkiye botches its World Cup opener against Australia
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The two Turkish World Cup drivers are not the only German players who have decided to play for the national team of another country. This is a problem for the DFB that will become even bigger in the future.
The causes are diverse
In Germany we had 2024 More than 42 percent of all children under five years of age have a migration background. Four years earlier it was around 40 percent. Many of these children love football and are members of a club. The official DFB statistics from 2025 say that a total of more than two million boys up to and including the age of 18 play football, plus almost 400,000 girls up to the age of 16. The teams are diverse. Some children have a migration background, others not.
Kai Krüger, head of the junior national teams at the DFB, explains in an interview with t-online: “In our U-teams it is not uncommon for up to seven young people from a first team to be eligible to play for at least two nations.” As they get older, however, the question arises as to which nation they want to choose. In the recent past, the DFB experienced both cases. Jamal Musiala chose against England, Deniz Undav against Turkey, Malick Thiaw against Finland. They are all in the squad against Curaçao on Sunday.