Monday, October 18, 2021
Cruciate ligament rupture changes lives
Bayern Munich’s Insta icon is back
Giulia Gwinn is Germany’s most successful soccer player – on Instagram. The “best young player” of the 2019 World Cup has to fight her way back after a cruciate ligament rupture on the pitch. On Thursday, the full-back from Bayern Munich will be part of the national team again.
Somewhere between the private and training photos that Giulia Gwinn posted is one from September 19, 2020. The national player is lying on the grass, holding her knee and stretching an arm up for help. The cruciate ligament rupture changed her life. Now the 22-year-old from FC Bayern Munich is back in the DFB selection. And many eyes in the scene will be on Gwinn: On Instagram, the defensive player, who was named “Best Young Player” at the 2019 World Cup, now has a quarter of a million followers – more than any other German footballer.
#comebackstronger has become a standard social media statement when an athlete is seriously injured. Is that really true? “I think that saying makes sense, but I still think it’s stupid if you just say it because it’s this hashtag,” said Gwinn. “In retrospect, I can already say that you can learn a lot and also draw positive things from such a time. I think physically and mentally I’m on a different level than I was before.”
At the German champions from Munich, Gwinn has played his way back into the team after a long period of suffering. Now she is part of the squad for the German women’s World Cup qualifiers against Israel on Thursday (9 p.m. / sportschau.de) in Petach Tikva and on October 26th (4:05 p.m. / ARD) in food. National coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg gave the returnee a guarantee: “We did without Giulia at the games in September so that she could get more rhythm in the club. We want to experience her not only in training, but also in the game.”
Grown up
The lockdown during the Corona period did not make the rehab period easier for Gwinn. But in her Bayern colleague Jovana Damnjanovic, who was also injured in the cruciate ligament, she had a loyal companion. The Serbian says of “Giuli”: “She was the little, young superstar. She never dared to say anything in a large group. Now, a year later, she has really grown up.”
Gwinn’s luck, she said herself, was also that the European Championship in England was postponed to 2022. “This allowed me to heal my injury in peace and quiet and didn’t have a tournament in mind all the time. At the moment I really live in the here and now and maybe experience it more intensely than others.” She is completely symptom-free and “overjoyed” about the nomination for the team of the 2016 Olympic champion.
“Of course you want to get your place back in the national team. It would be a lie if it weren’t,” said the sports management student. “But I think I have to find my way back in first and give myself the time.”
Documentaries, documentaries, documentaries
Gwinn has made 19 international matches so far, with many more to come for the athlete, who was born in Ailingen on Lake Constance and made her Bundesliga debut for SC Freiburg at the age of 16.
FC Bayern even shot a documentary about their difficult year: “Guilia Gwinn – 336 days”. In the Sky contribution “My Story”, she said that because of her popularity in women’s football, she also felt envy. It is “a difficult topic with competition and such.”
On Instagram, Gwinn shows herself as young women of her age often do: in a leopard print dress at sunset, in front of the mirror or with a bright red top in a convertible. Social media are an important platform, but: “The focus should always be on me as a footballer. There will always be private insights, but that is irrelevant.”