The German team is still far from winning the EURO 2024 championship, but looking at the runs of Jamal Musiala or Florian Wirtz, fans of this country have seen a light of hope after nearly a decade of darkness.

After just two matches, Jamal Musiala has reached two milestones. The Bayern Munich star became the first player to win an individual award at EURO 2024, when he was awarded the best player in Germany’s match against Scotland. It’s not really that special, because Germany were the first team to play, so Musiala obviously had the advantage. However, look at the following milestone: Musiala became the second youngest player in history to score in both of his first two matches at a EURO finals (21 years and 114 days), behind only Hungary legend Ferenc Bene. And Bene’s achievement took place 60 years ago.

Musiala is the inspiration for the German national team’s attack.

AFP

60 years is also a period of time almost equal to a lifetime, witnessing the continuous rise and fall of German football. “Die Mannschaft” once swept the EURO and World Cup in the period 1972 – 1996 (5 championships), then stagnated in the early 2000s, returned to the top of the world in 2014 and then sank again. When the skinny boy Musiala joined Chelsea’s training center to nurture his football dream with a dream that was inspired by his father and mother, both immigrants, the German team was in crisis due to failure (both World Cups 2018 and 2022 were eliminated in the group stage) and division.

Mesut Ozil once said goodbye to the German national team with a bitter saying: “When I win, I am German. When I lose, they just see me as an immigrant.” Players who are not “purely German” like Ozil and Ilkay Gundogan were criticized. Even before EURO 2024, a German radio station questioned Gundogan’s captaincy. Besides internal turmoil, over the past 10 years, the German national team has also struggled to find the next generation to follow the likes of Manuel Neuer, Matt Hummels, Ozil, and Thomas Muller.

Then at EURO 2024 , the light has flashed, with a young star stepping onto the big stage to solve the talent problem for “Die Mannschaft”, while also breaking down the prejudices about immigrants that exist in the subconscious of a part of Germany. Jamal Musiala is doing both with his mesmerizing play in the modern number 10 role.

Unlike conductors who lead the classic style of play, Musiala leads the German attack with endless energy. He moves tirelessly, covering the entire field on the right, center and left wings. If former defender Robert Huth said Musiala has “magic in his feet”, coach Julian Nagelsmann rated Musiala and Jude Bellingham as the two most promising young stars at the moment, not only because of numbers and records, but also because of the immeasurable mechanical factor, which is thinking. If Musiala only had the ability to dribble like the ball stuck to his shoes, then it would be too… normal, German football is not lacking in such “dribblers”. The difference of the star born in 2003 also lies in the intensity of his activities, the ability to choose a good position between the opponent’s defensive layers and eliminate defenders with just one touch.