It has been a transformative 2024 for Germany.
Their trip to Hungary, in their final international of the year, ended with a 1-1 draw in Budapest but the overall progress has been pronounced. Felix Nmecha had given the Germans the lead before Dominik Szoboszlai’s 98th minute penalty snatched a point — it was not enough to prevent Julian Nagelsmann’s side from topping a Nations League group that they dominated.
The Germans remained unbeaten. They scored 18 goals in six games against the Hungarians, Bosnia, and the Netherlands. Appointed in September 2023, Nagelsmann inherited a side at its lowest ebb in a generation, but has positioned them as one of the favourites for the 2026 World Cup.
Off the pitch, this team have also re-engaged a disinterested public with their national team.
Germans are watching Germany again. Germans are interested in Germany again.
In January, the broadcaster RTL will release a documentary about the 2024 European Championship. “Unser Team — Die Heim-EM 2024” (Our Team — the home European Championship 2024) sounds like a strangely saccharine recollection of a tournament that ended in a quarter-final defeat to Spain. Germany are four-time World Cup winners and three-time European champions and, under normal circumstances, such an early elimination would be followed by a root-and-brand review.
But times have changed and the documentary will be received well. Euro 2024 was Germany’s best tournament performance since 2016 and arrested a downward trend that, at times, had started to feel semi-permanent.
The country, too, is trudging in the gloom. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government has collapsed and with elections looming at the beginning of 2025 — and myriad social and geopolitical issues swirling in the background — the future has acquired a nebulous, even threatening quality.
At the time, the European Championship felt like a four-week distraction from those issues. No surprise, then, that fans are eager to hurry back. Or that some of the symbols from the summer are still being clung to.
In Freiburg on Saturday night, Germany’s pink away shirt decorated the stands. Peter Schilling’s Major Tom, the ubiquitous anthem, played after each goal in the 7-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. And in the months since the tournament ended, Andre Schnura, the previously unknown saxophonist who led the fans on their merry dance, has been playing a nationwide tour, his popularity undimmed.
A few weeks ago, Schnura’s trademark sunglasses even became an exhibit in the country’s national football museum in Dortmund. Later the same day, he stood alongside Rudi Voller — his idol, whose shirt he wore in the fan parks — to draw Bayern Munich against Bayer Leverkusen in the next round of the DFB-Pokal.
Schnura is a remarkable story.
A music teacher who lost his job before the tournament started, he picked up his saxophone, headed for the host cities, and started to play. Within a week, he was among the most famous people in the country, embodying Germany’s determination to enjoy itself.
But the team itself did more than anyone to build that mood and is still helping to sustain it. They are winning, which matters, and they promise to only get better. While Nagelsmann has enviable resources to pick from, the culture of what he has created seems especially important, as do the players who — in a different era — might not have been fashionable enough to receive a chance.
Borussia Monchengladbach forward Tim Kleindienst is one of those and he has been one of the stories of this international break. The 6ft 4in forward scored his first two international goals against Bosnia, and — more remarkably — has scored in each of Germany’s top four divisions.
Often mistaken for a simple target man, Kleindienst is an outstanding one- and two-touch player who takes chances and works hard. With Niclas Fullkrug injured and Maximilian Beier out of favour, he looks certain to make the World Cup squad in 2026.
Eighteen months ago, that would have sounded ridiculous. Kleindienst had not made an appearance in the Bundesliga for over four years and had not scored a top-flight goal in five. However, in the 100th minute of Heidenheim’s final 2.Bundesliga game of the 2022-23 season, he scored to clinch an improbable promotion, setting his career on a new, fairytale trajectory.
Kleindienst scored 12 goals to help Heidenheim stay up despite the smallest budget in the league and, improbably, to qualify for the Conference League, too. It earned him a €7million transfer to Gladbach in the summer of 2024, where his goals, his awareness and ultimately his quality earned him his first call-up in October.
Nagelsmann’s great success has been to make the national team seem accessible to players like Kleindienst. While it would have been politically easier to keep picking big club players irrespective of form, he has chosen to reward productivity wherever it has occurred.
Serge Gnabry has recently returned to the senior squad, so too has Leroy Sane, but the international career of Leon Goretzka, their Bayern Munich team-mate, seems to be over. High-profile Borussia Dortmund players, including Karim Adeyemi, Niklas Sule, Julian Brandt, and Emre Can have also spent time out of the squad. Some have returned — most recently Brandt — but only once their performances have warranted selection.
Last season, Maximilian Mittelstadt, Chris Fuhrich, Waldemar Anton (now Dortmund) and Deniz Undav were rewarded with caps. Kleindienst’s old team-mate, Jan-Niklas Beste — one of the finest left feet in German football and almost certainly its most impressive beard — became the first international nomination in Heidenheim’s history in early 2024, before having to withdraw through injury. Mainz’s Jonathan Burkardt was called up last month, despite his club’s meagre form in the Bundesliga.
Nagelsmann’s reward for his approach has been public buy-in and the retention of everything that was awakened last summer. His Germany find themselves in the enviable position of being extremely talented while possessing just enough to capture the imagination. If Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz glint with class, then someone like Kleindienst — or Fullkrug before him — represent something more relatable.
It has created a German side that its public like and, more importantly, that they deeply believe in.
And why not? Germany are on a journey that still seems to have far to go.
(FERENC ISZA/AFP via Getty Images)
