Timo Werner
The RB Leipzig and Germany striker is one of the hottest properties in Europe at the moment
Dateline: Autumn 2009. A curly haired, 13-year-old striker by the name of Timo Werner, then on the books of VfB Stuttgart, nervously reels off his particulars in a video presentation, hopping from one foot to the other as he recites his “Me, Myself, I”. As media platforms go, this was strictly home-movie fare. But what a difference a decade makes, with Werner only featuring in blockbusters these days, conspicuously top of the bill in the role of goal-hungry RB Leipzig striker, established Germany international and one of the hottest properties playing in Europe today.
That Liverpool, Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and Internazionale rate him so highly makes perfect sense. Thanks to an advantageous contractual release clause, he would “only” cost
€60million and is a man of many parts: one of the speediest players in the world, able to play through the middle or out wide on the left, boasting an extraordinary aptitude for converting chances – 27 goals in all competitions for RB this season – and increasingly adept in the assist department.
You can trust “TurboTimo” in more or less all red-zone circumstances. Having only turned 24 in March, he is the gunslinger who is quicker on the draw than his shadow. Nor is he merely a sprinter cum finisher. He is technically strong, robust and has plenty of game awareness to boot.
Werner has a long history of dealing with headhunters. During his rookie season as a Stuttgart first-teamer – he was just 17 years and four months old when making his debut for the club in a Europa League tie against Botev Plovdiv in August 2013 – he was already on the radar of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Borussia
“VfB is my club. I’ve been here since I was little...I want to carry on learning and am happy to do that here” On resisting the lure of Bayern Munich
Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen, while German giants Bayern Munich had been seriously scouting him for even longer, regularly checking out his performances for Stuttgart’s youth sides.
Bayern sporting director at the time, and a connoisseur of football talent with the highest standards, Matthias Sammer was determined to bring him in. And he very much fancied his chances of doing so, only for the teenager to dig in his heels and insist on remaining with
Stuttgart, signing his first professional contract with VfB on his 18th birthday in March 2014.
Werner’s desire to stay put was as logical as it was emotional. A first-teamer for just nine months, he rightly concluded that, with his apprenticeship far from complete, continuity was his best course of action. He was a VfB fan too, born in the same Stuttgart district, Bad Canstatt, as the club’s Mercedes-Benz Arena. The ties that bound were tight as he had been with VfB since he was six, joining them in 2002 from the little-league ranks of local outfit TSV Steinhaldenfeld.
“VfB is my club,” he explained at the time. “I’ve been here since I was little.
“I’ve come through all the different age categories and feel really comfortable here. I want to carry on learning and am happy to do that here.”
For those with their finger on the pulse of German football, Werner’s rise to the upper echelons was no real surprise. Growing up he was the golden child turned platinum youth, an elite stripling who could not help but be noticed. On the Stuttgart nursery slopes he was the one who never lost his balance, contributing a goal a game (24 in all) as the under-17s clinched the German title in 2012 and netting no fewer than 24 goals for the under-18s the following season.
Frieder Schrof, who was head of youth development at VfB for three decades before retiring last year, painted a telling anecdotal picture in a piece in Kicker magazine, revealing: “Every weekend the youth department at VfB would produce internal bulletins on the performances of our various teams. Next to Timo’s name there invariably would be a three, a four or a six in brackets.
“Even as a little boy he was the one who scored the most goals.”
Werner was also a pillar of German representative sides, proving especially productive for the under-17s, with 16 goals in 18 appearances, and the under-19s, nine goals in 11 games.
In an unforgettable 2012-13 season he was such a valuable commodity to the German federation that he played for both the under-17s and under-19s. It was an incredible campaign in every way, with the youngster piling up 43 goals in 41 games in all competitions for club
and country. His reward for such sterling efforts was the best-in-class rosette in the national under-17 player of the year category. The runner-up in that 2013 poll was Julian Brandt, now an attacking star for Dortmund and Germany.
“Timo has extraordinary ability,” gushed then Stuttgart director of sport Fredi Bobic. “He has the directness, the nose for goal opportunities, speed and great finishing.” And his boss with the German under-17s, Stefan Boger, agreed: “Timo is a natural taker of chances, is good athletically and is tremendously quick.”
It was undoubtedly Werner’s good fortune to learn his chops at Stuttgart. The Swabians in white-and-red have an excellent tradition for cutting in-house gems and it’s no coincidence that the current Germany squad contains no fewer than three VfB academy graduates: Werner plus the Bayern duo of winger Serge Gnabry and full-back cum midfielder Joshua Kimmich.
Werner and Kimmich have known each other since their early teens. They went to the same high school in Stuttgart, Wirtemberg-Gymnasium, and remain the best of friends.
“Timo always has had lots of goals in him,” said Kimmich at a German national team press conference just before the last World Cup. “Playing alongside him, I never had an instance when he did not end up the top scorer in a championship or tournament. He’s an absolute weapon.”
In the 2013 close season the initial Stuttgart plan was to not rush things with the then 17-year-old and let him concentrate on his final year of high school and only deploy him with the under-19s. Yet somehow, some way, the programme never was implemented. Werner was too exciting a prospect to be denied, definitively convincing coach Bruno Labbadia with a late supersub goal – with his weaker left foot – in a friendly win against Turkish club Belediyespor in late July.
On a baking hot afternoon in the southern German city of Friedrichshafen this was the moment his career well and truly received its launch code. No wonder his father Gunther, watching in the stands, jumped up in delight. Here was the ice-breaker: his son’s first senior team goal and pro ticket to ride.
“Timo had been dreaming of this goal,” his dad would later tell reporters. “I’m so pleased for him.”
A string of first-team appointments duly followed: a Europa League start versus Botev Plovdiv; an end-of-match cameo against Dynamo Berlin in the DFB Cup; then his Bundesliga debut, coming on as a late substitute in a 1-0 home loss to Leverkusen and in doing so becoming VfB’s youngest-ever German top-flight player at 17 years and 164 days.
“I would have picked him for the team when he was 16 if league statures had allowed it,” said Labbadia.
Remarkably poised and fearless for one so young, he continued to catch the eye. In September 2013 he started his first Bundesliga game for Stuttgart, marking the occasion with two assists in a 6-2 thumping of Hoffenheim. Three weeks later, he opened his top-flight goalscoring account, heading in the
equaliser in a 1-1 draw at home to Eintracht Frankfurt. Usually lining up on the left wing but with licence to drift in at every opportunity, he looked every inch the wunderkind. Not bad for a schoolboy who took the bus to training.
Early in November he further cranked up the publicity machine with a brace in a 3-1 win at local south-west rivals Freiburg. Both his goals were sterling solo efforts, with defenders left flummoxed and helpless as he put his hurricane pace, quick feet and deadly finishing touch to explosive use. The first 17year-old to score two goals in a single Bundesliga game he had the air of a “made in Germany” Lionel Messi.
The reaction of some of his teammates and the Stuttgart hierarchy to his Freiburg masterclass was interesting to say the least.
Coach Thomas Schneider, who had taken over from Labbadia, limited himself to just one short and sharp comment – “the boy has tremendous speed” – while fellow Stuttgart striker Vedad Ibisevic appeared to admonish the youngster for not passing prior to firing in his second goal.
Keeping Werner’s feet firmly on the ground was the order of the day. Hence the post-match decision to select him for a spot of heavy lifting, ordering him to help carry the kit hampers to the bus.
In the media, though, it was an altogether different story. Tales of precocious feats sell and up and down the country, and the pundit community were in a frenzy.
Not least the former Bayern
“Maybe he’ll be at the [2014] World Cup...other countries simply do not have such players” Mehmet Scholl
Munich and Germany playmaker Mehmet Scholl, who intimated that the youngster was already in the national-team waiting room. “Maybe he’ll be at the World Cup [Brazil 2014] next year,” declared Scholl on the ARD network. “Other countries simply do not have such players.”
Scholl’s prediction would prove wide of the mark as Bundestrainer Joachim Low was never likely to drag such a raw, inexperienced youngster away from his exams. But who could blame Scholl for getting carried away with the hyperbole. The kid was special.
As far as senior national-team honours were concerned he would have to be patient and was forced to wait until March 2017 for this particular rite of passage, winning his first cap in a 1-0 friendly win over England in Dortmund in March 2017. The reasons it took so long to make the breakthrough are straightforward enough: he was still a little wet behind the ears and inconsistent; the hype was a tremendous burden, with too much expected of him; and in all his three years in the Stuttgart first team the club were perennial strugglers, eventually falling through the Bundesliga relegation trapdoor in the spring of 2016.
Against such a dysfunctional backdrop, it was hardly shocking that he found it difficult to play to his potential.
Moving to RB Leipzig in the summer of 2016 – joining them in a €10m deal – was the best possible outcome for Werner. He was the snuggest of fits for the extraordinarily ambitious Leipziger.
Not only was he young, vibrant, versatile and self-possessed, his turf-devouring speed was made to measure for RB’s quick transition style.
“Timo is so quick he can turn off the light in his room and be in his bed before it turns dark,” joked RB coach/ director of sport Ralf Rangnick.
Werner’s opening gambit with RB, in 2016-17, proved to be one of glorious vindication. He scored 21 top-flight goals that campaign to end up as the best German finisher in the Bundesliga and had the satisfaction of playing a vital role in RB’s first-ever Champions League qualification, via the runners-up spot in the league. He also finally broke into the national team set-up.
He could do no wrong, and just to cap a wonderful phase he delivered the goods in his country’s triumph at the Confederations Cup in Russia, where he scored three goals and made two others. Germany would not have won the tournament without him. The Golden
Boot he picked up, receiving the award from Diego Maradona no less, was thoroughly deserved.
Werner, who appeared in all three of Germany’s matches in their disastrous World Cup 2018 campaign, is exactly what Low looks for in an attacker: the goals, the substantial deep threat, the rip-roaring pace, the comfort in hightempo matchplay. Yet he still has some way to go to nail down an automatic place in the starting XI. Low has a weakness for “false strikers” and has toyed with using winger Gnabry in such a role.
Given his flair for goals – 88 for RB Leipzig in the last four seasons – and
“I’ve had a lot of abuse and still scored my goals. I’ve zoned it out and carried on playing my game” Facing up to criticism
the transfer-market fever he generates, it is rather surprising that his popularity levels in Germany are not the most flattering. Like all RB players he has to contend with the fact that large swathes of the German football public cannot abide the Leipzig outfit, regarding the whole Red Bull operation as a moneygrabbing exercise. In this black-orwhite world, RB Leipzig are looked at as mercenaries, as agents of an anti-tradition agenda. This is the cross Werner and his team-mates must bear.
In terms of fair play and PR, he has let himself down on occasion, notably when clearly diving for a penalty in RB’s 2-1 Bundesliga win over Schalke in December 2016. Werner, who himself converted the resulting spot-kick, claimed at first that he had not conned the referee into believing that Schalke goalkeeper Ralf Fahrmann had brought him down. The following day, he confessed and apologised, but the damage was done.
For months on end he was the nation’s favourite felon, whistled and jeered wherever he went. He even came in for a hotter-than-hell reception from fans of the national side, who jeered him when coming on as a substitute in a World Cup tie against San Marino in Nuremberg in June 2017.
“All I could do was to swallow it and hope that time would heal the wounds,” he told Kicker. “One thing I can say: I’ve learnt my lesson from this business. I will be stronger for it going forward.
“I’ve had a lot of abuse and still scored my goals. I’ve zoned it out and carried on playing my game.”
He faced an entirely different type of problem during RB’s Champions League face-off with Besiktas of Turkey in the autumn of 2017. Visibly discomforted by the sonic boom noise of the Istanbul crowd he asked to be withdrawn after only 30 minutes. Apparently he had been suffering with vertigo.
“I’ve never known such an atmosphere in my life,” he explained after a 2-0 defeat for the
Roten Bullen. “I could not focus on the match. I asked for some earplugs and it did not help either. I still don’t feel well.”
Just as well then that he is so singleminded and grounded. Frieder Schrof, Stuttgart’s youth-system guru, knows the striker as well as anyone and only has praise for his attitude and enthusiasm for his craft, telling Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper: “Timo always shows good character and mentality. You see it when he goes hunting for the ball. For him, there’s no such thing as too many sprints or a run which is too long.
“He’s been a professional for six years and often people forget that he needs more time to develop into an established pro. Sometimes his youthful friskiness can come to the surface and he has to control that.”
Happy to describe Werner as a “decent, well-behaved boy who is results orientated”, Schrof attributes much of the youngster’s success to his mother, Sabine Werner, and her now estranged husband, Gunther Schuh.
Schrof calls the pair “down to earth and sensible” and makes no secret of his belief that Werner is cut from the same cloth. His parents certainly did a good job. Keen for him to have an academic
back-up plan, they insisted that he complete his high-school studies and it’s thanks to their influence that he has turned into a rather low-key superstar. No fancy haircuts or tattoos, no massive social-media presence, just a preference for a quiet life with his girlfriend Paula.
Even when combining with first-team stardom at Stuttgart back in 2013-14 he refused to let it go to his head, making a point of not signing autographs. “Because I’m just a normal schoolkid,” he said.
He is very much a chip of the old block. His father Gunther was no mean footballer himself, a professional/semipro in the German regional leagues and second tier with Ludwigsburg and Stuttgarter Kickers. He used to play on the right wing and naturally had plenty of advice for his offspring.
“When I was little, he used to play football with me,” recalled Werner in the
Schwarzwalder Bote daily. “I’d never stop shooting at goal. From the word go we worked on my shooting technique, first with my right foot, then with the left.”
Those fun-packed sessions have paid off. Genes + practice + instinct = industrial quantities of goals.