There’s long been an age-old debate for German football fans when it comes to Joshua Kimmich. Is he better utilized as a right back or as a central midfielder? Under different managers for both club and country, he’s been used in both positions in different systems and playing styles, but it looks like he’s going to be playing a lot more midfield moving forward. Former German national team managers Hansi Flick and Joachim Low had used him many times as a right back, but Julian Nagelsmann has made
it clear that he plans on using Bayern’s number 6 in a central midfield role from here on out for Die Mannschaft.
From a tactics perspective, there are so many different nuances that can go into where a manager best sees any given player playing, but at this stage in his career, Kimmich is a massive part of what makes this Bayern team tick. He’s a midfield metronome that has defensive capabilities, excellent vision, excellent adaptability, and a winner’s mentality — a manager’s dream type of player. For Kompany, he most often keeps Kimmich in midfield and has really only used him as a right back out of necessity as Bayern never seems to be able to complete a single season without small injury crises.
Ahead of Bayern’s first round DFB-Pokal clash against Wehen Wiesbaden, Kompany was asked whether or not he has taken any inspiration from some of Kimmich’s performances for Germany when he often occupies half spaces on the right hand side of the pitch, being able to send in crosses in attack. While there’s a lot of success Kimmich finds in the national team in that vein, Kompany admitted that he doesn’t really watch the Germann national team, and gets his ideas from what he sees from Bayern’s training and matches.
“If I’m completely honest, I don’t watch international matches that often, but rather analyze our own games. Any inspiration we have comes from what we see in training and in our own games. We haven’t changed anything about that,” Kompany explained in the pre-Wiesbaden press conference (via @iMiaSanMia).
In terms of positioning and what spaces the Bayern midfielders can utilize, Kompany is more concerned with keeping an overall level of fluidity to the way his team plays and that there are certainly tactical tweaks made on a match-by-match basis depending on the opponent. “Whether the central midfielders drift out wide isn’t so important; what matters is the fluidity in our game. It might be right that you noticed something like that in one game, but what I can guarantee you is that it will be different the next game. That’s a big principle for us,” the Belgian manager stressed.
