Joshua Kimmich celebrates a special anniversary on Wednesday. The captain of the German national team will wear the DFB jersey for the 100th time in the Nations League. But the FC Bayern player has long since looked in view.
When Joshua Kimmich leads the DFB team on the field as a captain on Wednesday against Portugal, the FC Bavaria player has reached a milestone: of all things in the Munich arena, his “living room”, Kimmich will play his 100th international-only 13 players did it in front of him. “This is something that I am really proud of and, I think, can also be,” said the 30-year-old in an interview with the “kicker”. “Because these 100 caps show that I have been at a consistently high level in the past nine years and has always been healthy and fit.”
At the press conference on Monday, Kimmich was asked which premium he wishes for the 100th international game: his modest answer: “I don’t want a bonus. It is very special to play for Germany. Every international match is something special in itself.”
The “golden generation” around Kimmich becomes Losing generation
His DFB career began on May 29, 2016 in Augsburg with a 1-3 bankruptcy in the friendly against Slovakia-further difficult defeats for the Bayern player should follow in the dress of the national team.
Kimmich, like Leon Goretzka, Niklas Süle and Serge Gnabry, belongs to the 1995/96 vintage and was referred to as the “Golden Generation” at the time, especially because of their joint successes in the DFB team and at Bayern. They were U19 European champions in 2014 and Olympic silver medalist 2016. After a “very successful” start with European Championship semi-final 2016 and Confed Cup victory in 2017, the national team went downhill.
Kimmich: “These six years were worse than medium”
At the 2018 and 2022 World Cup, Germany retired in the preliminary round: “The time afterwards was of course negative, starting with the 2018 World Cup until March last year. These six years were more medium, actually even worse than medium.”
The “golden generation” now had the flaw of the “Loser Generation”. Above all, the end in Qatar weighed hard on Kimmich – the burden of the “faltered” tournament pressed on him, he feared “to fall into a hole”. The messed up tournaments of the DFB team are “not so easy to cope with because I am personally associated with the failure. You don’t want to stand for that,” he said with tears in his eyes after the new World Cup debacle.
Thanks to national coach Nagelsmann “well stabilized”
But Kimmich overcame the crisis in the DFB dress. He mainly makes it up to one person: Julian Nagelsmann. Since he trained the DFB selection, “we have stabilized relatively well. You can tell in the team that everyone has to prove and prove. And everyone always wants to be there.”
For Kimmich, winning the Nations League would be a “good signal – to the outside, but also inwards.” Above all, with regard to the World Cup next year. Kimmich is the only player without a World Cup title in the illustrious club. But, as DFB sports director Rudi Völler recently stated: “He is young enough to win titles. Lothar Matthäus and I was only allowed to celebrate our first big title with 30, so he still has time.”
Kimmich’s next destination: Matthew’s record of 150 international matches
In addition to the World Cup title, the 30-year-old has another big goal, as he revealed to the “kicker”: “very early” in his DFB career, he had set the record of Lothar Matthäus out of 150 missions. “At 39, he went to his last international match, that’s a house number,” said Kimmich, emphasizing: “A lot has to run optimally to crack the 150: you always have to be healthy. You always have to deliver at a high level. You need a trainer who supports you.”
In Nagelsmann he definitely found a trainer who relies on him. Kimmich has a “role model function” for the teammates, but also an “extremely human side” the national coach summed up last Friday: “You can’t do it better, the office with the bandage.” Nagelsmann has a contract with the DFB until after the European Championship 2028. Two good options to successfully complete the hunt for a big title – and also to get a little closer to Matthew’s record.
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Source: BR24 02.06.2025 – 6:30 p.m.
