Germany squad for Women’s Euro 2022: player profiles - Popp, Däbritz...
With a squad headlined by the likes of Alexandra Popp and Sara Däbritz, Germany will be chasing a ninth European title in England.
As part of The Guardian’s Women’s Euro 2022 Expert’s Network, a collaboration between media outlets from 16 countries, AS is offering in-depth profiles of the players in all 16 squads at the tournament, which reaches its finale on Sunday 31 July as England take on Germany in the final. This lowdown on the Germany team is written by Zeit’s Nicolas Horn and Christian Spiller.
How to the watch the Euro 2022 final: England vs Germany
Ann-Katrin Berger
Date of birth: 9 October 1990
Position: Goalkeeper
Club: Chelsea
A goalkeeper whose achievements have gone a little bit under the radar in Germany, having left the country at the age of 23 to join PSG. A superb penalty saver, she is now with Chelsea, has won three WSL title in a row and in 2021 she was one of the three nominees for Fifa’s world goalkeeper award. Has had to fight back from the terrible news in 2017 when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She underwent radioiodine therapy, which includes taking tablets that made her radioactive and for three days she would have to be alone in a room, not seeing anyone. “That was the most difficult time mentally”, she has admitted. Made a remarkable comeback, 76 days after the diagnosis.
Merle Frohms
Date of birth: 28 January 1995
Position: Goalkeeper
Club: Wolfsburg
Her first football education came in the garden with her older brother as the outfield player shooting at Frohms in a swing frame which acted as the goal. She had very little luck in stopping her brother’s shots so she went to the local club to be taught how to keep goal. Her first goalkeeper’s shirt was that of Oliver Kahn and as a teenager she joined Wolfsburg but had very little playing time because Almuth Schult was standing in her way. This summer, though, she will return to Wolfsburg to replace Schult. Frohms, who saved two penalties in the Under-17 European Championship final in 2012, is probably the best of the many good German goalkeepers at the moment.
Almuth Schult
Date of birth: 9 February 1991
Position: Goalkeeper
Club: Angel City FC
Possibly the best-known Germany women’s player after she was a pundit for the men’s Euros in 2021 on ARD. She is also part of the sports policy initiative Fußball kann mehr, which campaigns for equal rights and other reforms in football. Schult is not afraid to criticise the German FA when it comes to equality and promoting the women’s game. A superb goalkeeper as well, she was voted the best in the world in 2014 (together with Hope Solo) and also won the Champions League that year. She has six Bundesliga titles and an Olympic gold but is now No 2 behind Frohms. “We get on well,” she said about her relationship with Frohms, “but I want to make the coach’s decision as difficult as possible.” Has joined the US side Angel City this summer.
Sara Doorsoun
Date of birth: 17 November 1991
Position: Defender
Club: Eintracht Frankfurt
Her mother comes from Turkey and her father from Iran, but she was born in Cologne and is a typical Rhinelander: very funny and one of the entertainers of the team. Doorsoun started out as a goalkeeper, before playing as a winger and then, gradually, slipped back into central defence. In January, she joined Frankfurt from Wolfsburg in order to get more playing time before the Euros. She had packed all her bags and was ready to make the move when she had to go into covid isolation – she ended up borrowing cutlery and other things from neighbours so that she could at least have a few meals on her own.
Giulia Gwinn
Date of birth: 2 July 1999
Position: Defender
Club: Bayern Munich
Often deployed at full-back, there are those who say she is wasted that far back on the pitch as her attacking qualities are so good. Playing mainly on the left, she likes to cut inside to try to finish, like an inverted Arjen Robben. Sadly tore her cruciate ligament during such a move two years ago. “The time after that was the hardest of my life,” she says. Popular on Instagram with more than 260,000 followers, she likes to drive vintage cars, especially in Cuba. She is also very superstitious: “I always go on the pitch with my right foot first and the procedures on match day must always be the same.”
Marina Hegering
Date of birth: 17 April 1990
Position: Defender
Club: Wolfsburg
Hegering recently shocked Bayern fans by announcing that she is leaving for Wolfsburg. The Wolfsburg offer was simply to good to resist, with a four-year deal on the table, two of which she will play before moving into coaching. She already has a coaching licence that allows her to train youth teams. Hegering is a latecomer to the national team; she played her first international match at the age of 29. The main reason for it taking so long was injuries – and she has been troubled by some last season too. “I played with the boys when I grew up but never felt I was getting any special treatment,” she once said. “My hair was really short as well, so I almost looked like a boy.”
Kathrin Hendrich
Date of birth: 6 April 1992
Position: Defender
Club: Wolfsburg
Born in Eupen, she could have played for Belgium, but opted for Germany, which the national team coach, Martina Voss-Tecklenburg, is very happy about. Hendrich is a reliable player in a problem area for the Germany team. She is fast, strong in duels and difficult to dribble past. In short: one of the best defenders in the Bundesliga. Quiet off the pitch, she is not known for doing anything that would shock her teammates. “Kathy is a bit of a prude,” teammate Turid Knaak once said jokingly. Has said that comparing women’s and men’s football “is complete nonsense”. She added: “They say that the Under-17 men’s team would beat us but that is only logical because of the different physical characteristics. Tactically and technique-wise we are on the same level.”
Sophia Kleinherne
Date of birth: 12 April 2000
Position: Defender
Club: Eintracht Frankfurt
Joined Frankfurt at the age of 17 with the intention of playing in the second team. But by the second half of the 2017-18 season she was promoted to the first team and has not looked back since. Despite being only 22, she is the leader of this Frankfurt defence. She used to play up front and believes that helps her now. “I know how strikers think,” she has said. A very clean and intelligent player, she rarely gets yellow cards and, in 2020, she was chosen by Uefa to be one of the 10 best talents in Europe. Asked whether she is a better player than her brothers, she said: “That is still undecided, but what I do know is that it is thanks to them that I am playing and that they are firmly behind me at all times.”
Felicistas Rauch
Date of birth: 30 April 1996
Position: Defender
Club: Wolfsburg
Has bounced back from just missing out on the 2019 World Cup squad. “It felt a bit like a doomsday at first, I had given everything to be there,” she told the Wolfsburger Allgemeine. This time there was no risk missing out though, her game going from strength to strength in the intervening years. If she plays at left-back, Gwinn is likely to switch to the right. Moved to Berlin with her family as a child and played for Turbine Potsdam for 10 years. Now with Wolfsburg, she has a bachelor’s degree in business psychology and is currently doing a master’s degree in innovation and futurology. “I think it helps my football to be studying,” she has said. “It has been good to be able to focus on something else and after an intensive period of studying I always really want to get back to playing.”
Linda Dallmann
Date of birth: 2 September 1994
Position: Midfielder
Club: Bayern Munich
Grew up in a large family, with six siblings (four brothers and two sisters) and often went to the gym with her brothers. She still does now, working on her strength, but mainly as injury prevention. Dallmann is one of the shortest players in the squad but has arguably the best technique in the whole of the Bundesliga. Admits herself that she has a big mouth and can therefore be a bit annoying but has made some unexpected friends at her new home. “I moved last year and noticed that there were a lot of squirrels in the trees in my new place,” she told Spox. “I started to train them so that they could get closer and then to feed them. It took a while but it got better and better.”
Sara Däbritz
Date of birth: 15 February 1995
Position: Midfielder
Club: Lyon
One of the superstars of the Germany team and, since joining PSG in 2019, she has become even better, despite suffering a cruciate ligament injury a few months in. “In the beginning everybody’s telling you you will come back stronger then you think ‘yeah, we will see’,” she told the Guardian this year. “But then, in the process, you start believing in this sentence.” Technically supremely gifted, the national team coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg said recently: “I wouldn’t want to play against Sara Däbritz right now”. Grew up in north-eastern Bavaria, where she played alongside boys up to regional level, including one who is now her boyfriend. In Paris, she liked to walk around the artistic area of Montmartre. “At the top of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica you have a beautiful view over the rooftops of the city,” she said, but announced in June that she was leaving the club to join rivals Lyon.
Lena Lattwein
Date of birth: 2 May 2000
Position: Midfielder
Club: Lyon
Usually plays alongside the other Lena (Oberdorf) in central midfield for Wolfsburg but her versatility is her trump card – she can also play at centre-back or in attacking midfield. Once said that she wished she could speak more languages, but there is still time. Currently, though, she is studying business and mathematics at the University of Mannheim. “I need that for my balance to football, something for my head”, she told the Women’s Bundesliga magazine. Her favourite dish: rump steak.
Sydney Lohmann
Date of birth: 19 June 2000
Position: Midfielder
Club: Bayern Munich
Lohmann’s parents met while travelling, lived in Australia for a year and got married there. That’s why her first name is that of the Australian city. She made her debut in the Bundesliga at the age of 16, and scored Bayern’s 1000th goal. She is a classic box-to-box player who can do both the attacking and the dirty work. Loses the ball a bit too often perhaps but often wins it back with her physicality. Pizza is her favourite food and she is aiming to make the perfect one at home, even buying an extra oven to make the difference.
Lina Magull
Date of birth: 15 August 1994
Position: Midfielder
Club: Bayern Munich
Was born 225 years to the day after Napoleon Bonaparte, who was two centimetres taller, but there is nothing in Magull’s demeanour that hints at any complexes. In fact, despite being a leader for Bayern and the national team, she doesn’t take herself too seriously. She is very quiet, say her teammates, but she has “five minutes every day when she goes a bit crazy.” For a friend’s wedding she once walked around Munich’s Marienplatz dressed as a crocodile together with Kathrin Hendrich. She comes from Dortmund but has always been a Bayern fan, something the family, somehow, seems to have accepted.
Lena Oberdorf
Date of birth: 19 December 2001
Position: Midfielder
Club: Wolfsburg
In the national team she is called Obi, like the German DIY chain, because there were already too many Lenas in the team. Oberdorf is a Schalke fan but, being born in December 2001 she didn’t have to live through the famous “Four Minutes in May 2001″, when Schalke thought they had won the league (only for Bayern to score to win the title). A huge talent she broke Birgit Prinz’s record as youngest German World Cup player in 2019. Now, still only 20, she is likely to take on a leadership role this summer. Used to think that girls’ football was “silly” but is now one of the most physical players in the team.
Nicole Anyomi
Date of birth: 10 February 2000
Position: Forward
Club: Eintracht Frankfurt
Has spoken openly about the racism she has experienced in Germany and took the knee after scoring for Essen as a sign of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. “We have to be active and raise our voice and speak out,” she said. “If something happens you can’t just stand by, look on and say nothing. Of course some people have never experienced it before and are shocked and freeze up, but some just stand there or walk on even though they’ve seen something and could have acted. That’s just not right.” In February the Germany team also knelt before kick-off in the match against Canada. In that game Anyomi also showed what she can do football-wise. “She is an asset for us”, Martina Voss-Tecklenburg says. “She has so much speed and she can really hurt opponents.” Admits to suffering pre-match nerves but no one in the squad matches her dynamism.
Jule Brand
Date of birth: 16 October 2002
Position: Forward
Club: Wolfsburg
When she went to primary school, her class were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. Many of the others answered doctor, lawyer or pilot, but Brand simply said: a national team player. She managed that – and in some style too, scoring after two minutes of making her debut. The winger, who is easy to spot with her long strides, is one of the best talents in the world. “Jule sometimes doesn’t even know what she can do,” says Martina Voss-Tecklenburg. Brand, who is joining Wolfsburg from Hoffenheim this summer, likes to gamble on the pitch and the one criticism that can perhaps be labelled at her is that she plays too casually at times.
See also:
Klara Bühl
Date of birth: 7 December 2000
Position: Forward
Club: Bayern Munich
Arguably the greatest German attacking talent to emerge in recent years. Won the German FA’s young talent award named after Fritz Walter in 2019. Made her Bundesliga debut at 15, scored her first goal at 16 and already had more than 80 Bundesliga games at the age of 19. Was one of the first female footballers to join Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka’s WeKickCorona initiative. Lived in Paris with her parents for four years when growing up and went to nursery there. Still has a very German pastime: knitting. In a short interview with the Bayern video team she admitted that she “is pretty crazy and not always in control of what she is doing”.
Laura Freigang
Date of birth: 1 February 1998
Position: Forward
Club: Eintracht Frankfurt
Open, cool, self-confident. Freigang, more than anyone else perhaps, is a poster girl for the next generation of German female footballers. Committed to fighting exclusion and homophobia in football, she has read out hate comments against women’s football on her TikTok channel and made fun of male footballers’ Gucci handbags. She spares no one, also taking on the German FA when it comes to equal pay and the footballing body’s social responsibility. She became interested in sports politics in the USA, where she studied and played for Penn State University. She has what it takes to become a German Megan Rapinoe.
Svenja Huth
Date of birth: 25 January 1991
Position: Forward
Club: Wolfsburg
Has won just about everything a German footballer can win: the Champions League, the European Championship, the Olympics, the Bundesliga and the German Cup. Huth belongs to a different generation of footballers than many of her teammates. When she played in the Bundesliga for the first time (2007) many of the others were still in school. But, as with a red wine, she is getting better and better with age and, of course, she still has the World Cup to win. Roll on 2023. It’s been a good season already for Huth, who won the double with Wolfsburg and then announced that she had married her girlfriend before the pre-Euros training camp.
Alexandra Popp
Date of birth: 6 April 1991
Position: Forward
Club: Wolfsburg
The Euros and Popp have not gone well together in the past. Twice, in 2013 and 2017 she missed the tournaments because of injury. And then it seemed like it would happen again: in April 2021 she suffered another bad injury: a torn cartilage in her right knee. But this time she benefited from the tournament being delayed by a year due to covid and she has fought her way back into the squad. After a year out she played for the national team again in April 2022 and it was an emotional day. “I don’t cry often,” she said afterwards, “but on this occasion the tears were rolling down my face.” Once, after being able to stroke a gorilla’s face through the fence at a zoo, she fell in love with animals and thought she’d never want to work in an office. So instead she started an education to become a zookeeper and when she had moved to Wolfsburg, did some work experience at Tierpark Essehof.
Lea Schüller
Date of birth: 12 November 1997
Position: Forward
Club: Bayern Munich
“I would never join FC Bayern.” This phrase, popular in large parts of footballing Germany, and featuring in a song by the Düsseldorf punk rock band Die Toten Hosen (whose frontman Campino is a Liverpool fan and Klopp friend), was on a poster in Schüller’s room. After all, she was a huge fan of Borussia Dortmund. However, after seven years with Essen she joined … yes, Bayern, in 2020. She is the biggest goal threat in this squad and she is on target so often that, in a reference to Gerd Müller, people no longer just say “es müllert”, but also “es schüllert”.
Tabea Wassmuth
Date of birth: 26 August 1996
Position: Forward
Club: Wolfsburg
Whether it helps her read the opponent’s defences or not we do not know but Wassmuth has a master’s degree in psychology and she is currently working on her PhD (topic: rehabilitation measures for stroke patients). To relax she watches the German-Austrian TV series Der Bergdoktor which, frankly, must bring down the average age of viewers quite considerably. Like her DFB colleagues Lattwein and Brand she comes from the Hoffenheim school of football and played there between 2015 and 2021. She is one of the fastest forwards in the Bundesliga and also possesses a lethal shot.