Germany may have crushed Curaçao in their World Cup opener through stellar efforts by Jamal Musiala, Kai Havertz and Deniz Undav among others, but the country still took the time, amidst their celebrations, to critique the performance of Leroy Sané. His inclusion in the squad, let alone the first XI, has come under serious scrutiny following a middling season at Galatasaray and years of failing to impose himself on Germany’s right flank.
Sané noticeably missed some big chances and delivered a generally
underwhelming attacking performance against the World Cup debutants, which was the root of all the criticism. But Germany captain, Joshua Kimmich, came to his former Bayern Munich teammate’s aid and defended him against the naysayers:
“I saw that [the criticism], and to be honest, I don’t think the criticism is understandable,” Kimmich opined (as captured by @iMiaSanMia). “I thought he was extremely committed, he never left me alone in counter situations and always sprinted back to help defensively. Of course he didn’t score a goal, which you’re judged by as an attacking player. But the most important thing is that internally, we don’t judge the players by that. Sure, it’d be cool if every player scored 3 goals, but there are also other tasks to fulfill. Leroy did that well. I don’t understand the criticism after a 7-1 win, especially when you see Leroy’s body language, which always was a point of criticism. He was always the first to celebrate the goals, even before the ball had gone in. For me that shows that the team is the most important thing for him. For me, he played a good game from the team’s perspective.”
BFW Analysis
Perhaps it all depends on the criticism Kimmich got wind of.
On one hand, Kimmich is indeed correct in his positive assessment of Sané’s relentless off the ball work as well as the fact that this work was crucial to the victory. Besides, as the captain, anything less than a public backing of a starting forward among the criticism would have fanned the flames much further.
But on the other hand, a forward will primarily be assessed on his actions near the opposition goal and the former Schalke 04 player really struggled to create much danger at all as well as wasting opportunities when they did go his way. His crucial effort off of the ball would make branding this performance as terrible rather unfair, but at the same time the performance cannot be classified as good if a forward has so little positive impact up front.
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