“If you want to be a winner”
What Julian Nagelsmann teaches his children
June 17, 2026 – 4:14 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
During his coaching career, Julian Nagelsmann had to learn to deal with defeats. However, he doesn’t want to teach his children that they can lose.
After the exit in the 2024 European Championship quarter-finals, the Spanish daily newspaper “Marca” described the national coach as a “bad loser”. The digital newspaper “OkDiario” once again said: “Nagelsmann cannot lose”. In the past he described himself as an ambitious person. This not only affects his entire career, but also the way he raises his children.
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“It’s also very important to me, not to teach my children that they can lose, but rather that you accept defeat,” he says in the FC Bayern video podcast in 2022. The Bayern coach at the time made a specific distinction between being able to lose and accepting defeat. Basically, he plays every game to win. “If you can lose, you don’t need to play,” adds Nagelsmann.
The national coach has two children from his first marriage. His son was born in 2015 and his daughter in 2020. He has no children with his current wife Lena Wurzenberger.
Defeats make a winner
Nagelsmann also answers the question of what makes a winner for him and how he would like to raise his children to be that way. In principle, there should be a winner and if you can lose, that is the first step that you are not a real winner. “If you want to be a winner, defeats are something you have to accept and learn from,” said the national coach.
Julian Nagelsmann did not have to use this motto for Germany’s first World Cup group game against Curaçao. The national team celebrated a 7-1 win against the team from the Caribbean on Sunday.