5 min readJun 14, 2026 03:03 PM IST
First published on: Jun 13, 2026 at 07:59 PM IST
They call him Bambi. Not for fragility, but for the way he carries the ball in traffic, that particular cleanness of movement. Jamal Musiala had 40 Germany caps and was being called the next Lionel Messi before he was 20. Then on July 5 last year, Gianluigi Donnarumma went for a loose ball and collided with him. Musiala fell screaming. His fibula fractured, his ankle dislocated. Donnarumma held his head in his hands.
Nagelsmann visited him at home during the months that followed. Not a phone call. He went in person, to tell him there was no rush. “It’s better if I come back in top form at the end of the season, and at the World Cup,” Musiala said. He did. Scored against Finland last month, completed 90 minutes for the first time since March, started against the United States on June 6. Bambi is back. Whether the old Bambi is back is the question this World Cup will answer.
Germany arrive carrying two consecutive group-stage exits and a goalkeeping controversy. Manuel Neuer retired after Euro 2024, said his piece, made his peace. Then came Bayern against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu: nine saves, man of the match, a performance that reminded everyone why he had been their number one for 14 years. Nagelsmann picked up the phone. Oliver Baumann, told as recently as the week before that he would start the World Cup, found out differently when the squad was announced. Sami Khedira had gone on television to defend him: “We are killing Oli Baumann right now. We are killing him in the media.” Forty years old, fifth World Cup. Some decisions make themselves.
Lothar Matthaus and Thomas Mueller are already at loggerheads. Mueller wants Musiala brought on to take a crack at tired legs. Matthaus accuses him of destabilising the team. The debates don’t stop there. Joshua Kimmich’s best position remains a national conversation. The centre-back pairings are unsettled. A decade-long argument about why Germany have not produced an out-and-out striker since Miroslav Klose grows louder each year. What were once the basics of a Turniermannschaft, a team that grows taller as a tournament progresses, are now lost. Philipp Lahm calls for a return to the archetype. Nagelsmann plays with what he has.
What he has up front is genuinely exciting. The quartet of Kai Havertz, Florian Wirtz, Musiala and Leroy Sane can skin defences in different ways: they interchange, create, press. Nagelsmann has built a 4-2-3-1 that transitions into a 3-6-1, an xG-popping juggernaut that narrowly lost to eventual winners Spain at Euro 2024. It has not been smooth since. Toni Kroos and Ilkay Gundogan retired. Wirtz suffered for form at Liverpool before finding himself. Serge Gnabry was ruled out with injury.
What remains is a strong attacking front and a hastily assembled core. Take Kimmich and Jonathan Tah out and what is left in midfield and defence is ordinary. Nico Schlotterbeck, highly valued by Nagelsmann, started eleven of Dortmund’s fifteen clean-sheet matches and is only recently back from injury. These machines break down often.
The pattern of the past four years is clear. Germany beat the teams below them. Against the best, Japan and Spain at Qatar, Spain again at Euro 2024, France and Portugal in the Nations League, the gap in individual quality outside the front four becomes apparent quickly. Group E, with Curacao, Ivory Coast and Ecuador, should allow them to progress. That is not the question. The question is the ceiling.
Matthias Sammer staked his prediction on patience: “I’m absolutely convinced Musiala will improve significantly as the tournament unfolds. Maybe not the first match, maybe the second. Then comes the knockout stage and suddenly he’ll explode.”
The old Germany did not need one player to explode. The system exploded. The Turniermannschaft grew with each match, arrived at finals as different teams than the ones that had kicked off in the group stage. That version of Germany did not depend on one player finding himself in real time.
This one does. Nagelsmann visited Musiala at home and told him there was no rush. Musiala came back anyway, scored against Finland, started against the United States, arrived in Winston-Salem ready.
Germany open on Sunday. Bambi is in the building. Now he has to run.
Germany players pose a team photo before an international friendly soccer match against the United States in Chicago, Saturday, June 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh) 
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