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Jonas Hofmann now knows this pose
Photo:
ATTILA KISBENEDEK / AFP
At the moment it's almost too perfect for Jonas Hofmann.
In the national team, he has not only established himself in the starting XI, he is also their top scorer in 2022. And as if the DFB had planned it the year before, when the schedule was created, the national team is just getting into this Hofmannian high- Times to Mönchengladbach to play the fourth and for the time being last Nations League game of the summer (ZDF, 8.45 p.m.) against Italy.
Hofmann also gets a home game before his vacation.
The "Tagesspiegel" these days elevated Hofmann to the "winner among the undecided", the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" voted him "currently the most important German attacker", Hofmann had to be almost 30 years old to read such headlines.
At 20 in the Bundesliga, with 28 national players
He's really not a late starter in top-flight football, he played his first Bundesliga game in 2012 at the age of 20, at that time for Borussia Dortmund, substituting in the 89th minute for Mario Götze.
In the meantime, exactly 200 league games have been added.
Nevertheless, it was not until his eighth year as a Bundesliga professional that Joachim Löw nominated him for the DFB team for the first time in 2020.
And you have to say that the football nation didn't necessarily wait for Jonas Hofmann back then.
Although Löw took him to the European Championships, nobody assumed that the Gladbach player would play a major role there.
In the run-up to the European Championships, Hofmann also got injured, and that wasn't a national drama either.
Flick saw something special in him from the start
A year later, everything looks different.
Jonas Hofmann was born in Heidelberg, a classic wine region.
Now 29 years old, Hofmann is like a good Heidelberg Herrenberg Pinot Blanc, he has matured.
Hofmann has had a strong Bundesliga season and it is saying something to come out on top of what has been a mediocre at best Gladbach season.
The national coach also saw something special in Hofmann from the moment he took office, Hansi Flick initially converted him from an offensive player in the club to a full-back, an idea that his predecessor Löw had toyed with.
Most recently against England and Hungary he was then the man for the momentum on the right side of attack, scoring in both games.
And if he had shot the ball himself in the second half of the Hungarian game instead of wanting to pass the ball to his neighbor Timo Werner, he could have been the celebrated hero of the evening.
So he had to postpone the premiere as a double goal scorer in the DFB-Elf.
The fact that Jonas Hofmann is now considered the flick player of the first year, not all the highly talented and much younger ones on the offensive, such as Kai Havertz, Leroy Sané or Karim Adeyemi, is the reward for years of work for the Gladbach player.
But it also puts his club in a very complicated situation.
Borussia Mönchengladbach has once again failed to take part in the international competition, the financial scope has narrowed.
At the same time, Hofmann has done a lot for his market value, even though he's not 20 anymore.
One could also say that Hofmann is about to become too good for Borussia Mönchengladbach.
"Don't clarify something like that on the phone"
The national player's contract in Gladbach expires next year, Hofmann himself reacted evasively to inquiries about his future again last week, played for time, pointed out that he "doesn't want to clarify something like this on the phone, but to the person responsible in the eyes«.
And then, according to his own statement, he had a short phone call with sports director Roland Virkus.
That didn't sound like a real commitment to the club.
At that time, however, the question of coaching at Borussia was still unresolved, but that has since changed with the signing of Daniel Farke.
Farke and Hofmann once crossed paths in Dortmund, the coach looked after BVB's second team, the player had just returned to Dortmund from a loan from Mainz before moving to Mönchengladbach six months later.
"I trust myself to assert myself under a new coach," Hofmann said last week.
That should be the least of the problems.
No signing yet
After the ultimately disappointing two seasons under Marco Rose and Adi Hütter, the deficits in the club were also identified with a lack of change, with many players thinking about bigger clubs than in reality Borussia Mönchengladbach.
The names Marcus Thuram and Florian Neuhaus stand for it.
With goalkeeper Yann Sommer and Hofmann, there are actually only two players in the team who have attracted attention with their impressive performances - and thus arouse desire.
Hofmann has done enough himself in the past two weeks to have slipped a bit up the wish lists of other clubs.
Many opportunities to switch to a currently more prominent address will not open up for him in the coming years.
"Thoughts are going in many directions at the moment," says Hofmann about his future.
And in the club they could probably formulate a similar sentence.
Should you keep an almost 30-year-old under contract conditions that will certainly be significantly improved for him, or should you seize the opportunity to use the moment of high performance to achieve a handsome transfer fee for an almost 30-year-old?
The gambler's age is both risk and temptation.
It's tricky for everyone involved.
So far, Hofmann, like goalkeeper Sommer, has been one of those who play a role in Roland Virkus' plans to build a new team.
But building a new team is difficult.
So far there are still no concrete signings of any rank.
Farke should organize the new beginning.
Without changes in the squad, it will be a challenge.
Jonas Hofmann will watch all of this for a while.
But not forever.