Broken nose if need be!? This Bundesliga star wants the World Cup

Broken nose if need be!? This Bundesliga star wants the World Cup

"We definitely tried everything — with ice, with taping it shut, with stuffing 18 things up there," Mathias Ginter joked after Freiburg’s 1-0 win over Mainz last Bundesliga weekend. During the match, he had to be treated twice for a bleeding nose. Ginter was determined to avoid being substituted at all costs, as he later revealed. Did he have a premonition — or is he on a personal mission?

Just 20 minutes after his treatment, the defender set up Lucas Höler for the 1-0. For Ginter, that is currently just part of everyday business. The defensive leader has already provided six assists for Freiburg this season, and has even scored four times himself.

Most recently, Ginter headed home Freiburg’s third goal in the 3-0 first-leg win over Celta Vigo in the Europa League quarter-finals. Right now, he always seems to be in the right place.

If not as a goalscorer or a stabilising presence in defence, then sometimes as a vocal leader for his team. After Freiburg’s 3-2 defeat to Bayern Munich, Ginter went to the referees’ dressing room after the match and gave it a proper kick following several controversial decisions by Daniel Siebert. An action full of symbolism.

After several average Bundesliga seasons, the former Dortmund man is back in the spotlight. Maybe soon on the DFB stage again as well?

"As long as it hasn’t been decided for good yet, I’ll do everything I can for it. I’m just trying to deliver every three or four days and, of course, be successful with the team as well," the 32-year-old stressed a week and a half ago after the Europa League win in comments to 'ARD'. Despite the highest-scoring season of his entire professional career, he had recently still been turned down by Germany head coach Julian Nagelsmann. But giving up is not an option for Ginter.

So that a World Cup call-up might still happen this summer, he has already come up with his own personal plan: "Maybe I need to collect even more goal contributions than I have so far, or maybe it’ll take a title at the end of the season." Titles seem more realistic for Freiburg right now than they have in a long time.