How Ilkay Gundogan has transformed from international failure to Germany talisman

Ilkay Gundogan has become a key cog in the German machine (AP)

As the first manager of the Germany national team ever to be sacked, Hansi Flick left a legacy, if not the one he presumably wanted. Yet should a side resurgent under his successor Julian Nagelsmann mark a recovery by winning Euro 2024, the images will reflect a more positive part of Flick’s influence. He appointed Ilkay Gundogan captain and, while Nagelsmann’s decisions often feel a repudiation of Flick’s, with a marked determination to be different, he has left the armband with the Barcelona midfielder.

Gundogan has not been deposed, even if he has been displaced. Nagelsmann’s flagship move, the proof of his powers of persuasion, some evidence Germany had recaptured their lustre, was to persuade Toni Kroos to come out of international retirement before he goes into actual retirement. It represented terrific news, except for central midfielders. Leon Goretzka lost his place in the squad altogether. Joshua Kimmich was shifted to right-back. Gundogan was pushed further forward.

He has offered a reminder he is two players in one. It was Kroos who completed 101 of 102 passes attempted against Scotland. He is the deep-lying playmaker now. Gundogan, though, can be a penalty-box player, the smiling killer who can use his footballing intelligence to identify an opportunity and his technique to cushion a pass or steer a shot. As Hungary were beaten 2-0 in Stuttgart, Gundogan set up Jamal Musiala’s opener. He scored the second goal himself.

It was a display to indicate why Pep Guardiola once described him as the “best runner in second positions we have”; it reflected Guardiola’s 2021-22 reinvention of Gundogan, to use him less like Kroos, more like prime Frank Lampard. Gundogan has painful evidence of his capacity to take up dangerous positions: when he was poleaxed by Scotland’s Ryan Porteous, it led to a red card for the defender and a goal for Kai Havertz from the penalty spot.

Had Gundogan been carried off, it may have felt emblematic of an international career defined in part by misfortune; or just by not being on the pitch. Unlike contemporaries such as Kroos, he is not a World Cup winner: he was injured when they triumphed in 2014. Injury also meant he missed Euro 2016, when Germany reached the last four. He was in the 2012 squad, but without taking the field. So he is a rarity: with 79 appearances for Germany, but none in a knockout tie.

He made a lone substitute appearance in the disastrous 2018 World Cup campaign, missed the Euro 2020 defeat to England with another injury and spent the 2022 World Cup being substituted, sometimes needlessly, as Flick wrestled with the Kimmich-Goretzka conundrum. Gundogan went off with Germany 1-0 up against Japan, Goretzka came on and they lost 2-1. It was their first game and yet proved a fatal blow.

After he left City as a treble-winning captain, there was a case for calling Gundogan a great player at club but not international level. The man who united his former managers Jurgen Klopp and Guardiola in admiration had a fine goalscoring record for Jogi Low and Flick but no similar triumphs. And if it was a reflection of wider issues, a preference for Kroos and Kimmich, it is notable that even in a fallow period for Germany, there have been deluxe alternatives.

Seven of the last nine Champions League winners have had a German central midfielder (the other two have had a German manager); there is a case for saying Gundogan is not a particularly German midfielder and a Guardiola-style passer was headhunted when Barcelona, led by Pep acolyte Xavi, signed him. Yet Gundogan, often eloquent but invariably diplomatic at City, has been frustrated by the lower standards in Catalonia, despite the commonality of thought with Barcelona’s principles.

A style of play is one thing but references to his nationality can be more loaded. The broadcaster ARD’s infamous, inflammatory poll if the German team is white enough brought condemnation from Nagelsmann and Kimmich. In 2018, Gundogan and Mesut Ozil met Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former calling him “my president”; it led to the midfielder being booed by the Germany crowd.

Six years later, he is the first Germany captain of Turkish heritage. Like Antonio Rudiger, Jonathan Tah and Musiala, he may be a face of Germany that the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party dislikes; as City know, however, Gundogan can be a fine captain for a disparate group of players, combining his individual class with a capacity to inspire respect.

He has the ability to make an impact, too. If the rise of the young No 10s, Musiala and Florian Wirtz, may have put his position at risk, the Hungary game was an illustration of why he can be invaluable. And so what – by Germany’s high standards – could look like a failure of an international career may bring belated success.

With the possible exception of Bernard Dietz in Euro 1980, fine a player as he was, Germany’s trophy-winning captains have tended to be iconic figures: Fritz Walter, Franz Beckenbauer, Lothar Matthaus, Jurgen Klinsmann and Philipp Lahm. Maybe the next will be Ilkay Gundogan, the man whose time with Germany has been defined by misfortune and missing out, the man named captain by a manager who would soon be sacked, but whose talents equip him to excel for Nagelsmann’s new-look side.