İlkay Gündoğan retires: Not only a very good footballer is leaving

Opinion

İlkay Gündoğan’s departure from the national team is a loss for German football – but not only that. National coach Julian Nagelsmann is losing a central midfielder, but also an unusual personality off the pitch. The team is losing its captain, but also a social role model.

Let’s start with the footballing side of things. The national team’s 1-0 win in the European Championship match against Hungary was a scene that sums up Gündoğan’s career in the DFB team well. The ball seems to have already gone, but the man with the number 21 goes after it again, uses his body, pokes with his foot and finally plays the perfect pass to Jamal Musiala. Never giving up was typical of Gündoğan’s time in the national team, which began in 2011. 82 games, that only sounds like continuity. But Gündoğan had to deal with setbacks and injuries again and again. He missed out on the 2014 World Cup title.

İlkay Gündoğan is a team player in the best sense

Jürgen Klopp, Gündoğan’s coach at Borussia Dortmund, has star once said about Gündoğan: “His speed, his technique, especially his orientation in space, that was outstanding.” Gündoğan can play spectacular passes, but much of what makes him special is rather inconspicuous. With his runs he often opens up space for others. Before the European Championships he said about his interaction with Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz that precisely because he is the more experienced player, he has to adapt his game to that of the young players, not the other way around. A team player in the best sense of the word. Hansi Flick made him captain, Nagelsmann took over. The right decision.

Gündoğan will go down in German football history as the first team captain with a migrant background. That sounds more natural than it actually was. Gündoğan is a role model for successful integration, but also because his career shows how much integration can demand of a young person.

A photo with Erdogan becomes a state affair

The son of Turkish parents from Gelsenkirchen with a German passport decided early on against advertising for the Turkish Football Association and for the DFB team. For this, he was heavily insulted by Turkish fans. Then in 2018, shortly before the World Cup in Russia, Gündoğan and his national team colleague Mesut Özil had their photo taken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Now there was a hail of criticism from the German side. The photo was not only interpreted by the two footballers as election campaign support for Erdogan, but also as evidence of a lack of German patriotism. The matter developed into a state affair, and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier invited Gündoğan and Özil to a kind of integration summit at Bellevue Palace.

Özil’s relationship with Germany never recovered from this story, something which he himself contributed to, but also German football officials and parts of the media. Gündoğan, whom people who know him often describe as reflective, came through. It remains an irony of history that the player with Turkish roots who won the World Cup in 2014 eventually turned his back on Germany – and the other became captain of the national team but never won a title with them.

Julian Nagelsmann is now faced with a major problem. Without Toni Kroos and İlkay Gündoğan, there is a big hole in central midfield – both at the back and at the front. There is also a lack of experienced leaders. This will hardly be remedied by the 2026 World Cup, so the national coach is forced to rely on a new generation – and as someone who himself became the youngest team manager of all time, he may be just the right man for the job.

With Gündoğan gone, the national team will also be missing a player who knows what challenges can lurk beyond the pitch – in short, a man with life experience, even if he is only 33. Julian Nagelsmann praised Gündoğan as a footballer who played passes “with a message”. But that actually applies to the entire career of the German national player İlkay Gündoğan.