Played her way into the national team via Leipzig: Giovanna Hoffmann
Photo: imago/motivio
Alexandra Popp is known for not mincing words. And so Germany’s model footballer honestly admitted on Wednesday that she was actually quite happy to be sitting in the VfL Wolfsburg training center while the German national team was flying from Frankfurt to London at almost the same time. There the DFB women will face their first tough test without their long-time leader against England on Friday evening. »I can’t deny that I enjoy being here in Wolfsburg. It doesn’t feel strange: it’s completely okay,” assured the 33-year-old, who remembered her first international match: more than 14 years ago in Duisburg against North Korea, “as a little girl with no body tension and wobbly knees.”
Her successor could be Giovanna Hoffmann. At 26, she’s no longer a girl, but the RB Leipzig attacker doesn’t rule out wobbly knees either. “To be honest, she no longer expected the appointment.” One certainly cannot speak of normality before a debut at Wembley. »I’ve never been there before. You mentally prepare yourself for the fact that this is a terrible experience – regardless of whether you are allowed to play or not.
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Nothing illustrates the huge change better than the change to Popp’s parade position. And after Lea Schüller and Laura Freigang’s cancellations, there are hardly any alternatives. The novice Hoffmann only scored nine goals in her 85 Bundesliga games for Werder Bremen, SC Freiburg and Leipzig, while the VfL Wolfsburg striker scored 67 goals in the national jersey alone. Her 145th international match against Australia on Monday in Duisburg will be her last.
Popp believes in a “good and successful future” without her intervention: “We have incredible quality in our squad – including the players who are now nominated. I hope that the girls and the coaching team can bring this quality onto the pitch as a unit. We simply haven’t been able to do that consistently in the past in order to be really successful.” That certainly didn’t mean interim coach Horst Hrubesch, but rather his predecessor Martina Voss-Tecklenburg. The new national coach Christian Wück is now trying to make a fresh start after months of consideration.
With Hoffmann, an offensive force that hardly anyone had on their list should help. She fulfills “our position profile of a center forward almost 100 percent.” The former striker’s mission: »Scoring and preparing goals and securing balls under pressure. That requires a certain physicality.” He himself is curious to see whether the 1.78 meter tall soccer player “can also perform at a high level internationally.”
England’s association is expecting more than 50,000 fans for the repeat of the European Championship final in 2022. Since then, the popularity of women’s football has reached new dimensions. It became too much for Popp: “It feels like there is no private life anymore.” You have to learn to deal with it. Hoffmann obediently fulfilled all requests for autographs and selfies during the public training session in Frankfurt. She is considered a down-to-earth northern light: born in Bremerhaven, trained in Bremen. She was promoted to the Bundesliga twice with SV Werder before moving to Freiburg in 2020. Like many players, she has already suffered a torn cruciate ligament and other injuries.
Hoffmann revealed that the setbacks were going through her head when Wück contacted her. “You can’t realize it at that moment.” Co-coach Maren Meinert knows her from her days with the junior national teams. Now she’s excited to see “how it fits with her teammates.” It’s logical that she is based directly on her predecessor Popp, who had to work hard for everything in her career: “She is a role model for all of us, so to speak, because she is the face of German women’s football. She does a lot of things in the storm that I can copy. She interprets the position the same way I do.”
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