The best of all time? This Germany hero needs no cape | OneFootball

While the Germany national team looks to put the finishing touches on its World Cup preparations this summer with today’s match against Switzerland during the international break, one of the defining figures of Germany’s last great World Cup triumph, Manuel Neuer, is celebrating his 40th birthday.

The veteran has revolutionized modern goalkeeping like no one else and, in many of his 124 international appearances, was Germany’s ultimate insurance policy. The fact that calls for a Neuer comeback in the national team shirt have grown louder again in recent months ahead of the next World Cup in the USA, Mexico, and Canada has nothing to do with a German goalkeeping problem. Despite Marc-André ter Stegen’s terrible injury luck, Germany remains extremely well stocked with Oliver Baumann as the new number one and a host of talented keepers such as Jonas Urbig, Alexander Nübel, Finn Dahmen, and Noah Atubolu.

Those calls are more a reflection of the immense stature Neuer still holds even in the late autumn of his career. He laid the foundation for that hero status not only with great saves, but with a completely unique interpretation of the goalkeeping role that shook football’s tactical structure. Anyone who wants to understand why half of football-loving Germany still gets nostalgic today when a keeper leaves his box has to go back to Porto Alegre in 2014.

Neuer’s manifesto

The World Cup round-of-16 match against Algeria was Neuer’s manifesto. With that performance, he etched himself into the long-term memory of an entire generation of fans. He was not simply a goalkeeper there; he played sweeper, defensive midfielder, and emotional shock absorber all in one. He slid in to cut out through balls near the halfway line as if it were the most normal thing in the world, repeatedly putting out fires whenever Germany’s defense had been played through. From that moment on, football Germany no longer had just the “Kaiser,” the “Bomber of the Nation,” or the “Titan.” From then on, Neuer would carry the nickname “Manu, the sweeper.”

Andreas Köpke, who worked with Neuer as Germany’s goalkeeping coach from his debut in 2010 until Euro 2021, even once joked to 'dpa' that Neuer could “easily play in the 3. Liga” as an outfield player.

📸 Clive Rose - 2014 Getty Images

During his time in Munich, Pep Guardiola was reportedly talked out of actually fielding his keeper in midfield by Bayern bosses Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. And Thomas Tuchel, then PSG coach, once resigned himself after losing the Champions League final to Bayern by saying that having Manuel Neuer in goal was “already a bit of a distortion of competition.”

It is this feeling of invincibility that Manuel Neuer cultivated over a decade and a half. That also includes the legendary “appeal arm” — that reflexive raising of the hand after every goal conceded, which even earned its own hashtag and Twitter account. In a way, it was also a symbol of his perfectionism: if the ball ended up in his net, something couldn’t possibly have happened properly.

Fought his way back from a shattered leg

But you do not become a hero through victories alone — you also become one through the way you deal with major setbacks. Take the end of 2022, for example, when Neuer broke his lower leg while skiing. A goalkeeper over 35 with a shattered leg? That already smelled a little like a farewell tour. But Neuer came back and astonished many experts who had already written him off by that point.

Vincent Kompany sees exactly that as the secret: “Hunger is the most important word.” The Belgian stresses that at Bayern Munich, “you can’t do even a little bit less,” and says Neuer’s mental strength in motivating himself again and again for these top-level performances is simply impressive.

Even so, time also wears away at a monument. His calves act up more often now, muscle tears force him into breaks. The shine may no longer be quite as scratch-resistant as it was in 2014. Hitting “the big 40” eventually makes every athlete wonder whether the body can still permanently meet the high demands of the mind, says Köpke, who himself did not hang up his gloves until he was 39.

For Jogi Löw, the matter has been clear ever since the triumph in Rio: “Manuel Neuer is a godsend for football in Germany. For the development of our game and for the successes of the past decade, he was one of the biggest factors.”

And so the circle closes today. While the national team in Switzerland tries to cement a new era without him, the greatest German insurance policy of the past decade and a half may be sitting on the couch with a piece of birthday cake or a cold drink, watching it all unfold.

The calls for his return will probably not fade as long as he is still picking balls out of the top corners at 40. Because in the end, Manuel Neuer has never been just about saves. It is about the feeling that there is someone back there who understands the game so deeply that he has, in a way, rewritten the rules for himself. Germany has many talented goalkeepers, but only one who brought back the sweeper and modernized it at the same time.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.

📸 Pool - 2014 Getty Images