Joshua Kimmich interview
Bayern Munich’s versatile starlet celebrates his birthday with FFT
What were you doing at 8.45am on your birthday? Inspecting the inner seams of some shower-phobe’s sweaty shirt-pits on the overcrowded train into work, perhaps? Debating the nutritional merits of birthday cake as part of your balanced breakfast? Groaning uncontrollably on the living room sofa, a catatonic hungover mess?
Well, Joshua Kimmich wasn’t doing any of those things. Bayern Munich’s precocious defensive midfielder was sitting on a bench at the club’s Sabener Strasse training ground, waiting for Fourfourtwo.
When we arranged to sit down with German football’s most promising starlet at 9.30am on February 8 – his 22nd birthday – we worried that
Kimmich might not actually show up at all. “Trust me,” laughed Bayern’s press officer. “He’ll be there.” And 45 minutes early, too.
As we hastily prepare our early-morning party scene, complete with balloons, party poppers and cake, a crowd gathers outside this glass-fronted canteen, keen to be involved in the celebration.
“Being 22 feels the same as being 21,” says Kimmich, laughing. “But I think this is the first time I’ve ever done an interview on my birthday! Nobody knew enough about me to bother doing one last year, so you must be the first!”
He is only half-joking, really.
Barely 10 hours earlier, Joshua Kimmich was still walking around the Allianz Arena pitch and applauding the home faithful, fully 10 minutes after the final whistle had blown in a 1-0 win over Wolfsburg that took Bayern into the last eight of the German Cup. Being an idol, it seems, is as much of a novelty as devoting a part of your birthday to the world’s best football magazine. “It’s not that long ago I was in the stands myself!” he tells FFT. “As a fan, I know how it feels when the players acknowledge your efforts with their own applause. Home and away, every game is always sold out and that’s a special feeling, so we have to give something back.” Kimmich isn’t lacking in self-awareness, and he hasn’t forgotten that just two years ago he was playing in the second division at RB Leipzig. Last summer he was selected in Euro 2016’s Team of the Tournament, having made his Germany debut less than a fortnight before it began. “There’s no way I expected to progress so quickly,” Kimmich admits, drawing a mid-air line graph that soars up. “Bayern could have bought anyone in world football, but they chose a 20-year-old second division player! I could not believe it.” To appreciate the size of the task in front of him, all Kimmich had to do was glance to his left at his July 2015 unveiling, where Douglas Costa sat after his £21 million move from Shakhtar Donetsk. Different types of player they may be, but even at the beginning of this season, having already established himself in Bayern’s first XI, Kimmich still faced competition for a midfield starting berth from Arturo Vidal, Xabi Alonso, Thiago, Javi Martinez, Renato Sanches and even Philipp Lahm. “I have never doubted my ability, but at the start I wasn’t too sure how I would get in the team,” admits Kimmich, leaning on his elbow, his left leg resting at 90 degrees to his right. “I was very lucky to have had Pep Guardiola as a coach during my first season, as he gave me the chance to experience some top-level football in some very important Bundesliga and Champions League games. “The competition for places here inspires you every day because you know you must give your best if you want to play, and there’s no better way to learn than that.” If there’s one word Kimmich uses more than any other, this is it. “A footballer never stops learning,” says the youngster, who’s now sitting bolt-upright, almost consumed by a constant need to improve. Indeed, his English is almost perfect and yet he constantly apologies to FFT that it is not better. “You have different coaches, so you’re always picking up new things,” he says. “For example, Carlo Ancelotti is very calm and experienced. He watches and studies, preferring to point out our mistakes during half-time or in the occasional break in play. Pep, on the other hand, just wanted to be involved constantly. “Look at Xabi Alonso. He learns, maybe not every day any more, but from each coach he plays for. It’s normal to learn and want to get better, especially for young players like me.” Kimmich relies on knowledge. He isn’t the tallest, the quickest nor the strongest, but he is definitely the most tactically astute of all 22-year-old footballers. He takes in everything. And so he excelled under Guardiola’s unique brand of one-on-one tutorship – never more so than after the future Manchester City manager’s
maniacal dissection of Kimmich’s display in a goalless draw away at Borussia Dortmund in March 2016. Moments after full-time, and in full view of the cameras, a wild-eyed Guardiola lectured his young charge for over a minute, his intense gaze never deviating from Kimmich’s.
“He wasn’t too happy with my last five minutes!” laughs Kimmich. “I had been playing at centre-back, but Mehdi Benatia replaced Xabi Alonso [on 89 minutes] and Pep wanted me to push into midfield for the rest of the match. I had not picked that up as quickly as I should have, so he was pretty nervous for those few minutes. He said that he had wanted to run onto the pitch because I hadn’t noticed him waving on the sideline. After the match, he was full of adrenaline. He cares.
“He’s a very emotional guy. He tells you about all of your mistakes straightaway, and that’s the best way to learn. You sleep on it, rather than wake up the next day and forget about it, so you can implement the changes that you need to make.”
Kimmich demands perfection. During the first half of that match, his last-ditch tackle on Marco Reus saved a certain Dortmund goal. Social media soon declared it one of the best challenges ever. “But I was out of position in the first place!” he says. “Marco’s first touch was good, but not perfect, so there was a chance to come around the side and get the ball, thankfully without giving away a penalty.
“Next time, though, I would prefer to be in the right position and then not have to make the tackle in the first place, even if that does stop Twitter going into meltdown!”
Kimmich was born in Rottweil, the south German home of the fiercely loyal dog breed, and bred 10km away in the tiny village of Bosingen. He and football have been inseparable bedfellows since he watched Germany’s run to the 2002 World Cup Final in Yokohama. And even before then, a seven-year-old Kimmich turned his birthday party into an impromptu kickabout in his Bosingen back garden, playing football with his friends all day until it got too dark. Father Berthold, himself a fine amateur player for the local football club, watched on proudly.
Kimmich Jr maintains that one of the best presents that he’s ever received – for his birthday or otherwise – came in the Easter of 2006.
“My mum got me a ball that was exactly the same as the one they would use a few months later at the World Cup in Germany,” he says. “It’s almost 11 years old and I’ve still got it. I played with it every day when I was a kid, and when I’m back in Bosingen I go and play with my old friends, using that same ball.”
When Kimmich was 12 years old, news reached Stuttgart of this talent from a tiny village nestled between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alps. Berthold would drive his son to every training session and match – a round trip of some 70 miles. “I will never forget those journeys,” muses a reflective Joshua. “We talked about everything: football, of course, but also school, family, friends... just everything.”
The journeys ended in 2013 when an 18-year-old Kimmich opted to join third-tier RB Leipzig in search of regular first-team football.
“It was not easy,” he recalls, and a serious tone now descends. “It was the first time I’d played with adults. It was very physical. Opponents spend 90 minutes running, tackling, winning second balls and trying to stop you playing. There’s no better education for an 18-year-old player learning to become a professional.”
He’s indebted to director of football Ralf Rangnick and coach Alexander Zorniger, who took him to the Saxony club. “I was proud that they wanted me,” Kimmich says. “I was surprised, as I wasn’t even getting into the reserve team withstuttgart, whose goal each season is not to be relegated from the third division, whereas RB Leipzig were looking to win promotion.”
When Leipzig sealed that promotion and immediately began pushing for another, Bayern took note of their midfield conduit. A clause in his Leipzig contract gave Stuttgart the option of taking Kimmich back or receiving around £5.5m from Bayern for his services. Stuttgart chose to take the cash.
“I would like to kill everyone who was involved in this decision,” fumed Zorniger, Kimmich’s former Leipzig mentor, when he became the Stuttgart manager six months after the deal was made. “He should never have been allowed to leave. It was a fatal mistake.” And their loss was Bayern’s gain. The 20-year-old – who’d idolised Stuttgart’s youth-team graduates, Mario Gomez and Sami Khedira, as they won the 2006-07 German title – joined up with the Bavarian behemoths instead. He hasn’t looked back.
“We’re top of the Bundesliga, so that’s the first goal for the season – anything else is a bonus,” says Kimmich today. “I’d be lying if I said I expected RB Leipzig to be our challengers, but I am happy for them. I’m just glad that they’re second, not first!
“Everyone at the club is looking for perfection, me included. That’s just the type of guy I am. For a while I have had a nagging thought: ‘Why do you never score?!’ So I have made a conscious effort to get into the box more and try to change things.”
That drive for self-improvement, and playing more as a box-to-box midfielder rather than in the anchor role or even as a defender under Guardiola, has helped Kimmich to score seven goals by the beginning of February. He’d netted just three in his entire career before 2016-17.
“I still think that I’m at my best as a defensive midfielder, but I have got no problem playing anywhere,” he explains. “You are never going to say, ‘I’m not playing right-back’ for the Germany national team, or centre-back for Bayern.
“I just want to stay healthy and focussed on being the best player that I can possibly be.” Before Kimmich sits in front of the FFT cameras and tucks into his second cake of the day – his girlfriend, Lina, made a sugarless one for the health-conscious pair – there’s time for one more question. And it’s not about socks that his grandmother has got him for the umpteenth year running.
The day before our chat, Bayern’s 33-year-old captain Philipp Lahm announced he’ll retire at the end of the season. Short in stature but tactically aware and impossibly versatile... see any similarities, Josh?
Kimmich puffs out his cheeks, almost embarrassed, before saying: “He never makes a mistake, he never gives the ball away and he’s the perfect team-mate. If people say I’m like him, then it’s no bad thing.”
The last time Fourfourtwo interviewed Lahm, he rang us up on his birthday – which is almost as impressive as turning up 45 minutes early to an interview on the morning that you turn 22 years old.
There must be something in the Bavarian water. Or the cake.
“PHILIPP LAHM NEVER MAKES A MISTAKE, SO IF PEOPLE THINK I’M LIKE HIM, IT’S no BAD THING”