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Robin Gosens during the international match against Denmark
Photo:
Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images
At one point during this press conference, Robin Gosens can no longer contain himself.
When a journalist approaches him about an avoidable resemblance to Lukas Podolski, the 26-year-old laughs.
"It's not the first time I've heard that in my life," he says, but he can't tell personally at all: "But his left hoof, I'd like that."
Lukas Podolski was the popular figure in the national team, he stood for the good times of this DFB-Elf, someone who took people along because he looked like one of them. In addition, in a good mood to the edge of the bearable, never aloof, saying man, not a marketing product, really not. On closer inspection, he and Gosens actually don't have that much in common outwardly, but the comparison is not all that wrong: Robin Gosens, the Italy professional from Atalanta Bergamo, can become someone who brings back a few people for the national team who have battered it Can polish image a bit. Podolski light.
The national player Robin Gosens shouldn't actually exist.
A player who at the age of 18 was still far from making a living from professional football, one who has not played a single minute in the Bundesliga, let alone knows the DFB's youth centers.
One always likes to listen to such stories.
Miroslav Klose and Jonas Hector took a similar path outside of the DFB boarding schools, and each time it was said: Something like this will no longer exist.
Emphasizing discomfort in business
"I knew that I always had to do a little more to get as far as the others," says Gosens.
He took the detours via the Dutch first division and Serie A, in Bergamo he is now a star, big clubs have him on their list.
The way to England, Spain or Juventus seems to be paved.
Step by step upwards, that is known as a career path in football. What Gosens does differently than many others, however, is how much he lets the public participate in his doubts and uneasiness in this business. The fact that the transfer fee required for him has now reached around 30 million euros is more alien to him than it pleases him. "How can it be that a single player is worth 30 million euros?" He asked in an NDR documentary that was broadcast in April. The more coveted he is, the less self-determined he feels. That can also be coquetry, but with Gosens it sounds as if he really doesn't understand this football world any more. And yet is right in the middle of it all.
It's a market value that will increase significantly over the next few weeks if things go well for him.
As a left-back, he jumped late in his twenties, but not too late, into the niche that Joachim Löw's team has always had.
The prospects for a regular place are good.
When did Löw have a defender on the left defensive side of international stature who is also dangerous for goals?
Who has already scored 21 goals in 107 games in Italy?
Gosens calls himself a "dynamic rail player".
Up and down the rail.
So far, a debt to the DFB
In an interview with the editorial network Germany these days, Gosens said that he saw the national team as a debtor, and that as a national player he had not yet called up what he had achieved in the club.
That's right, in the six international matches he has been rather inconspicuous so far, but most recently against Denmark on Wednesday he was one of the better.
When Gosens' perspective in the German-Dutch border region was more a career as a police officer than that of a professional footballer, he once hung a Thomas Müller jersey in his window during training at home.
And now and then looked there.
Now Müller is sitting next to him in the locker room, and these are probably the moments when Robin Gosens doesn't understand the world of football again.
But this time without any discomfort.
In the training units, says Gosens, there is “a lot of fire in there, we push each other up”, and now and then “it is important that we piss each other off during training”.
That all sounds very much like Podolski speech.
What differentiates him very fundamentally from the Kölsch idol is that Gosens sticks his nose in the books after training.
He's also studying psychology, the course is "first of all important for me to find my own balance", but if it allows him to help the team a little further in terms of communication, that would certainly not be wrong.
A Poldi with a degree in psychology, the national team really didn't have anything like that before.
