Nomination on Friday: Nmecha can become the next Wolfsburg DFB national player!
Lukas Nmecha can become the 18th German national team player at VfL Wolfsburg. With his winning goal in the Champions League game against Salzburg on Tuesday evening, the 23-year-old made the best publicity in front of national coach Hansi Flick. On Friday his squad will be announced for the final World Cup qualifying matches on November 11th in Wolfsburg (!) Against Liechtenstein and on November 14th in Armenia. Since the national team has already qualified for the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, the national coach is likely to forego some regular staff – and give debutants like Nmecha a chance.
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Even before the international matches at the beginning of October there was speculation about a Nmecha nomination – with twelve goals in 20 games for the U21 selection (including the winning goal in the European Championship final), the native of Hamburg already had the best references. And with David Raum, Florian Wirtz or Salzburg’s Karim Adeyemi, others have made the jump from the U21 to Flick’s squad.
In Wolfsburg, however, Nmecha was “only” the joker four weeks ago, now he has used the corona quarantine of VfL striker Wout Weghorst to secure a regular place for the time being. And: The selection of strong-closing strikers is not particularly large for Flick. “Lukas always has the ability to do something extraordinary,” praised VfL coach Florian Kohfeldt. “If he continues to confirm that, continues to work for the team, then his moments will come automatically, then from my point of view he is on the right path.” In the national team? “The Hansi”, according to Kohfeldt, has “a good eye” himself, so you don’t have to advertise Nmecha.
With Maximilian Arnold and Ridle Baku there are two other VfLers on the Flick Radar. Arnold’s pass to Nmecha before the win was “a world-class ball”, including Kohfeldt, “I think you can say that in the Champions League”. And Baku, who did not convince in the first leg against Liechtenstein at the beginning of September, showed not only with his early opening goal against Salzburg that he is on the way out of the low form.
And so it is very likely that Wolfsburg will be there in Wolfsburg when it comes to Liechtenstein in a week. And that the VW arena at home can be a good place from VfL’s point of view was already evident more than 18 years ago: In the Tobias Rau stadium in Wolfsburg on June 1, 2003, in a 4-1 win against Canada, VfLer’s very first international goal for Germany.