In the German national team’s opening World Cup victory, DFB attacker Deniz Undav was only substituted on, but the Stuttgart player impressed as a joker with two assists and a goal. Now the offensive man reveals the secret behind his strong form.
“As an offensive player or striker, you should never get into this phase where you think about: Why haven’t I scored in two games or why have I missed three hundred percent,” said Undav in an interview with the “FAZ”.
“The mindset always has to stay the same: Easy, I’ll do the next one. Even if you’ve had five chances before. If you get into the situation where you have to think about it, you’ll even screw up.”
And his odds definitely prove Undav right. In his ten international matches he was involved in a goal every 36 minutes and scored seven goals himself.
DFB star works hard for his career
So that he can deliver like this, the VfB star always works hard in training. “It’s not enough to just go into an exercise casually, you won’t improve that way. But if you do every exercise at 100 percent, then at some point you’ll have this situation in your instinct. Maybe not in the next game or the game after that, but at some point it will come and then you’ll put the thing back in,” Undav explained.
With hard work, the trained machine operator fought for his breakthrough late on: he played for SV Meppen until 2020. “There was more of a friendship there, I always had six, seven, eight teammates that I was out there with,” said Undav.
In the Bundesliga he had to get used to it: “Everyone does their own thing, even with their families, you have to respect that. But when it comes to the pitch, everyone fights for each other. Getting this switch is very important, I didn’t know that before.”