The undaunted gesture of Mats Hummels presided over each of Dortmund’s crises during the course of this Champions League. When Atlético won 2-0 at the Metropolitano, when they tied 2-2 at the Westfalenstadion; or when Kylian Mbappé received the ball and feinted with a brutal run in Paris. First of all, very calm. Like the conjurer, motionless until the climactic moment, his poise grew with each of his cat-like paws. This is how he stole balls from Griezmann and this is how he stole them from Mbappé in the Parc des Princes. Not once: several times. When an impertinent reporter asked him if that game in Paris had been the best game of his life, after he scored the winning goal (0-1), he calmly stopped with a distracted air to remember that he already knows what it’s like to stop in Dry to Messi: “My best game was the 2014 World Cup final.”
This central defender decorated in all conflicts, with a reputation for being virtuous, lazy and a womanizer, smiles from the 35 years of his pedestal when he is threatened with Vinicius Júnior, his archrival in the Wembley final, this Saturday. “I have been watching a lot of Madrid games,” he warned in the Bild, “and I have put myself in the place of the rival defenders. I ask myself: ‘What can I do in this situation?’ We must take away the possibility of attacking Madrid’s depth and this counts especially for Vinicius. But they have that depth especially after Toni Kroos’s perfect passes.”
A true aristocrat only recognizes art in another aristocrat. The truth is that a year ago Hummels’ career seemed over. The man plays a glorious encore after the most unexpected trajectory. Bavarian by birth, he emerged from the Bayern youth academy and played in the reserve team until 2008 when he was promoted to the first team as a great local promise. There he remained unseen until 2016, when he signed for Dortmund. They say in Munich that they let him go, convinced that a hedonist of his caliber was not cut out for the highest level. Big mistake. In his eight seasons in Dortmund he won two Bundesligas, played in the Champions League final in 2013 – he is the only survivor in the current starting lineup – and was the pillar of the defense that won the World Cup in Brazil. Then the Bayern leaders went looking for him to convince themselves, three years later, that his indolent attitude could not be good for the collective spirit of improvement. Disappointed, in 2019 they released him, and he ended up in Dortmund again, in what seemed like his retirement. There he languished until suddenly, last fall, he showed signs of recovering his lost intuition. Where before he was always late, he began to intervene punctually. There was no longer a play that would take him the wrong way.
Daniel Ríos, Dortmund’s academy coach who is now responsible for the U-19 team, points out a key point: “Like all centre-backs, Hummels must be analyzed by the teammates around him. With Nico Schlotterbeck they have formed the perfect central couple. The two complement each other and strengthen each other with the goalkeeper, Gregor Kobel, who is having a great season. He reminds me of Mathias Summer. When Dortmund won the Champions League in 1997, the team grew thanks to the understanding of the defenders: Summer played at the back free, with a lot of influence on the release of the ball, and Kohler and Julio César took on the opposing forwards and took more charge of physical duels.”
Protected by Schlotterbeck’s speed for direct defensive actions, and in the coverage provided by Sabitzer from the midfield and Maatsen and Ryerson from the sides, the old captain can fully dedicate himself to the art of anticipation, strategic reading, and distribution of the ball using all the profiles of his two feet with an air of smugness that only he can afford in this pragmatic rather than dazzling Dortmund. “We don’t always bring down the stars from the sky with our game,” admits Hummels. “But we feel that these are the weapons that have worked for us. We defend lower than before, with a compact block. “We play minimalist football in a good way.”
“I felt ashamed”
Hummels admitted this week that after the first round of the Bundesliga he influenced Edin Terzic, the coach, to modify his tendency to lock himself in at the back. “I felt embarrassed,” he confessed in the Bild. “And I told Terzic that a club like Dortmund could not afford approaches that did not pursue the opponent’s dominance for 95 minutes.”
His excellent end to the season, however, did not earn him the call he expected to play in the European Championship in Germany this summer. They say in the federation that the coach, Julian Nagelsmann, distrusts a footballer who trains so little. He fears the narcotic effect that a leader who lowers his heart rate during rehearsals could have on others. “I told Nagelsmann: ‘I sit on the bench, I can be your fifth center back.’ But he told me that he was considering other things, and he talked to me about issues more related to physical preparation,” the player recalls.
“Not being in the squad fills me with bitterness because I have no doubt that I am one of the five best defenders in Germany,” he says. “Very few can overshadow me if we defend 30 meters from our area. If it comes to pure racing, there are others better than me.”
Beneath his sleepy appearance the Duke He is angry. Edin Terzic hopes that all that resentment will materialize in the wall that stops Madrid this Saturday. “My job as a coach is to support my player and talk about it so that he can try to prove that they were wrong by excluding him from the national team,” Terzic observes. “Winning the Champions League will achieve this.”
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