The goals Popp has scored so far at these finals are a story in themselves – their first ever at a EURO. Because despite her now twelve-year national team career, it is the first European finals for Popp.
“It’s a big goal for me to be at the European Championships. My biggest pain was missing the European Championships due to injuries,” said Popp last year as part of the “Born for this” documentary series co-financed by the DFB.
Always setbacks
In fact, the attacker experienced setbacks again and again: Before the 2013 European Championships in Sweden, Popp tore the lateral ligament in his foot, in 2017, before the tournament in the Netherlands, a lateral meniscus tear followed, which even made Popp doubt that she would continue her career. Time and time again she had to fight for her comebacks, and in 2019 she also played the botched World Cup in France (quarter-finals). But the dream of participating in the European Championships lived on.
The next shock came in April 2021: Popp had to take a nine-month break due to a complicated cartilage injury. She would have missed the European Championships in England again – but the tournament, which was actually scheduled for the summer of that year, was postponed by a year due to the corona pandemic.
Time for Popp to fight back again. At the end of January 2022 she was back on the pitch – but the injured knee didn’t play along. The result: another operation. Downtime: six weeks.
Popp missed the only test before the EM with Corona
“Come back stronger”, in German: “Come back stronger”, is a social media phrase that is overused, especially in football circles, when it comes to wishes for recovery. In the case of Alex Popp, however, it seems to be working perfectly. Because the 119-time national player is now playing at the tournament in England as strongly as rarely before.
The deployment times that Popp is currently getting were not planned to that extent. The Wolfsburg striker only traveled to England as the number two striker. At the training camp in Herzogenaurach, she was the only one who had to be isolated from the team due to a positive corona test – and missed the only test against Switzerland (7-0).
Popp hits and hits – and it’s impossible to imagine life without it
Bayern’s Lea Schüller, top scorer with 16 goals in the past Bundesliga season, was set in the center of the attack in the run-up to the tournament, but the role of Popps, who last played in the sixth position at the 2019 World Cup and in Wolfsburg, is unclear. But then Schüller also became infected with the corona virus, her “representative” moved into the starting eleven – and has been indispensable since then.