Joshua Kimmich is a serial winner. At club side Bayern Munich, he has won 9 league titles, 3 DFB Pokal titles and a UEFA Champions League. With the senior national team, however, he is left with just a Confederations Cup triumph to his name. To show how little this competition is valued, it no longer exists in 2025. After several humiliating losses, including two consecutive group stage exits in the World Cup, Kimmich will need to find a way to translate that trophy winning mentality to the rest
of the German national team.
To start, Kimmich wants the team to not think of winning the World Cup just yet. Instead, as Kimmich explains to German news site Welt am Sonntag, all the focus should be trained on the qualifying matches ahead.
“I think the World Cup title isn’t really within our grasp right now, because we know we have to qualify first. Everyone has to be aware of that,” Kimmich emphasized, as captured by @iMiaSanMia. “I’ve often said that the road to a title doesn’t begin with the first group game, but long before that. It’s nice when everyone has the title as their goal, but we should focus on the next games for now.”
World Cup winners do not lose to Slovakia. But World Cup winners can lose to Slovakia, recover to still win the qualifying group and take that momentum into the tournament proper. Kimmich knows that the time to talk about titles is not when the qualifying group is still this tight.
