Coach is already looking ahead to the European Championships
Why isn’t Kimmich playing, Mr. Nagelsmann?
November 21, 2023, 9:01 p.m
The German national team plays against Austria in Vienna. And surprisingly without Joshua Kimmich. In midfield, national coach Julian Nagelsmann relies on a different pair. He explains his renunciation of the Bayern leader with “variability”. The decision is still a novelty.
Julian Nagelsmann justified his decision not to have Joshua Kimmich in the starting line-up for the international match against Austria in Vienna with his long-term plan for the home European Championship. “We want to test variability. Also with a view to the tournament,” the national coach told ZDF before the game in the Ernst Happel Stadium. “We can’t always play with the same couples,” Nagelsmann continued, referring to the tournament from June 14th to July 14th and emphasized: “A tournament is played with 14 or 15 players. Not with ten, not with 18. That’s where we’re moving at the moment.”
Instead of Kimmich, his Munich colleague Leon Goretzka ran alongside captain Ilkay Gündogan in defensive midfield. The duo last started there together in the group “final” at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar against Costa Rica (4:2). The decision against Kimmich is also surprising given their shared past in Munich. When Nagelsmann was still coaching FC Bayern, he only left his star student on the bench once – in October 2022, after a corona infection. In the remaining 72 competitive games in which he was available, Kimmich always started and was substituted nine times – like on Saturday in Berlin against Turkey (2:3).
In his 81st international match, the first under Nagelsmann, he was replaced by Goretzka in the 71st minute – like now in Vienna. Gündogan and Kimmich, Lothar Matthäus expressed the general expert opinion on RTL, “simply don’t fit together”. Kimmich was absent due to illness during Nagelsmann’s debut as national coach on the trip to the USA with the international matches against the hosts (3:1) and Mexico (2:2). Gündogan largely harmonized well with Pascal Groß, with whom he started both times.