Kai Havertz Reflects on Triumphs and Trials Ahead of World Cup
Kai Havertz remembers the silence first.
Not in the dressing room, not in the mixed zone, but in his own head, somewhere between the final whistle in Budapest and the moment he realised Arsenal’s Champions League dream had died in the cruellest way imaginable. He had scored early against Paris Saint-Germain, watched that goal stand as the winner for nearly an hour, and then seen it all ripped away.
Less than 24 hours later he was supposed to stand on an open-top bus, Premier League trophy in hand, parading through Islington.
Smile. Wave. Celebrate.
“To be honest, it was tough,” he says. “After the match, I initially thought we would call the whole thing off. By the next morning, things looked different.”
The next day did change everything. North London turned red, the streets flooded with colour and catharsis. The parade, which had felt almost indecent in the immediate aftermath of Budapest, became something else entirely: a release, a reckoning, a city exhaling after 22 years without a league title.
“We had a huge season behind us,” Havertz says. “The club had gone 22 years without a league title so that had to be celebrated properly with the fans. I have to say I’ve never experienced anything like it. So many people on the streets, so many supporting us. It ranks among my top three experiences as a professional.”
He is already hunting for a fourth.
From Islington to Winston
The backdrop now is not north London but Winston, North Carolina, where Germany have set up camp at the Graylyn Estate, a stately, castle-like base that feels a world away from the Emirates. The mood is lighter, the air clearer. The scars of recent tournaments have not vanished, but they have at least been confronted.
Germany, twice dumped out in the group stage in 2018 and 2022, have already secured top spot in Group E. That matters. It removes the immediate tension, the constant question of whether the four-time world champions still belong among the elite.
“Qatar was anything but successful for us as a team and for me personally,” Havertz says. “There’s a different energy in our squad now. I was quickly convinced that things would go better this year. We knew we had a duty not to fail early on again. We are Germany. But now the tournament is really just beginning.”
Nobody is doing laps of honour around the manicured lawns after a demolition of Curaçao and a late, hard-edged win over Côte d’Ivoire. But something has shifted. Germany have racked up 42 shots across those two games. They look like a team that enjoys attacking again.
“We radiate a real joy in playing,” Havertz says. “We move a lot, play offensively and create scoring chances. And we bounce back after conceding goals.”
The pressure, for once, seems to fuel them rather than suffocate them.
The ghost in the penalty area
Havertz’s own numbers in a Germany shirt are quietly ruthless: 24 goals in 60 caps. At 27, he is Nagelsmann’s starting centre-forward, the reference point at the top of the pitch, even if it was Deniz Undav who came off the bench to turn the Côte d’Ivoire game with a brace.
The calls for Undav to start against Ecuador were inevitable. So was the familiar undercurrent: the sense that, back home, Havertz’s value is still not fully grasped.
“Probably because I don’t play in the Bundesliga,” he says. “It was the same at times with Toni Kroos and Ilkay Gündogan, who were abroad for years. It is often said about me: ‘Havertz didn’t score again, he’s useless!’. And when I do score, they say: ‘Well, he’s supposed to, it’s about time!’ I don’t hold it against anyone; that’s perfectly normal.”
He shrugs it off, but the pattern is clear. Havertz is not a striker who roars and thumps his chest. He is not the classic No 9 who lives only between the posts. His game lives in the shadows, in the half-spaces, in the runs that look pointless until the replay shows three defenders dragged five yards out of position.
“Defenders should never know where I am, where I’m going, what I’m planning, or where I’ll be at any given moment,” he says in an interview arranged with Die Zeit. “That’s the worst for them. I try to be like a ghost to defenders.”
It sounds romantic. In reality, it is relentless work. Constant movement, constant recalculation. Mikel Arteta has built large parts of Arsenal’s attack around that selfless intelligence, the willingness to do the ugly running that never makes the highlights.
“I can’t just wait around in the penalty area, I need to be involved,” Havertz says. “I also make runs which I know sometimes look pointless, but I’m creating space for the players coming up behind me.”
He has always been that way. A winger at first, then a midfielder, then the false nine who turned into a genuine spearhead under Peter Bosz at Bayer Leverkusen. Nagelsmann once even used him at left-back in a friendly against Turkey in 2023. Havertz scored after five minutes.
“If he were to ask me to do it again, I would,” he says.
Misread body language, real nerves
The cool exterior has never helped him with snap judgments. To some, his easy gait reads as casual, his calm face as indifference. When the form dips, the body language gets blamed.
“I’m aware of the debates that I’m too laid back or my body language is wrong,” he says. “That always comes up when I’m not playing well. But I’m not the sort of person who dwells on it too much. It used to be different. I don’t brood on things any more.”
Inside, it is different. The big nights still bite.
“I know it doesn’t show from the outside, but I feel it,” he says. “Before a Champions League final, or at a World Cup. Or before penalties. I need that tension to stay focused.”
That instinct, that ability to live with the knot in the stomach and still execute, may yet define Germany’s tournament. The road ahead is hardly gentle. A buildup clouded by doubts, the looming possibility of a last-16 clash with France, the knowledge that a first World Cup title since 2014 will demand something close to perfection.
Havertz is at least in one piece now. Knee surgery at the start of last season, followed by a hamstring injury in 2024-25, could easily have turned his year into a write-off. Instead, he played a central role in Arsenal’s title run and arrived in North America fit and sharp.
“The last year and a half has gone badly for me,” he says of that run of injuries, which makes his club form all the more striking. The hunger to wipe the slate clean is obvious.
A different kind of heat
He knows this stage. He was part of the Germany side that rode a wave of home fervour at Euro 2024, only to fall narrowly to Spain in a draining quarter-final. The noise around this World Cup, spread across North America, feels even more amplified.
“The atmosphere is amazing. I was really excited before the Euros in Germany, too. A World Cup is even bigger. There’s incredible energy in the stadiums.”
The feared heat has not truly hit Germany yet. Games in Toronto and an air-conditioned arena in Houston have kept conditions manageable. Havertz has not once felt desperate for water in the 23rd minute, which colours his view of Fifa’s hydration breaks.
“They’re usually annoying, especially when you’ve just had two or three good situations and feel your flow is being interrupted,” he says. “But others decide that.”
What he can control lies elsewhere: timing, movement, finishing, the subtle art of making a team function better simply by being in the right place at the right moment.
Seeing it through
Long before Champions League finals and World Cups, there was a different decision, one that had nothing to do with tactics or formations. At 17, a rising talent at Leverkusen, Havertz wanted to walk away from school and skip the Abitur, Germany’s university entrance exam. Football was taking off. Why bother?
He was stopped in his tracks by a staff member at the club who framed it not as education, but as character.
“At 17, you don’t think you need school any more,” Havertz says. “At that age, you also don’t think about injuries or how things can suddenly take a completely different turn. It was a life lesson for me: seeing things through to the end instead of just quitting.”
That lesson hangs over everything now: the brutal night in Budapest, the euphoric parade in Islington, the quiet confidence at a World Cup base in North Carolina. Germany have cleared the first hurdle. The real tournament, as Havertz says, starts now.
The question is no longer whether he can handle the tension. It is how far that ghost in the box can carry a team, and whether this time, when the bus rolls through the streets back home, there will be no conflict at all about what they are celebrating.
