Kai Havertz Reflects on Champions League Heartbreak and World Cup Aspirations
Kai Havertz remembers the moment the bus was supposed to become a float.
Three and a half weeks ago in Budapest, he had scored early in a Champions League final that slipped agonisingly away from Arsenal. The night ended in heartbreak; the next afternoon was meant to be a procession through Islington with the Premier League trophy. The contrast felt grotesque.
“To be honest, it was tough,” he says now. In the raw aftermath, cancelling the parade seemed the only sane response. By the morning, the picture had shifted. The players climbed on the bus. North London turned red.
What followed convinced him they had done the right thing. A city pouring out into the streets, a fanbase releasing 22 years of frustration in one long, cathartic roar. “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.”
And now, in a very different corner of the world, he is hunting a fourth.
From Islington to Winston
Havertz is talking at Germany’s World Cup base in Winston, North Carolina. The setting is the Graylyn Estate, a grand, castle-like retreat where Julian Nagelsmann’s squad are trying to turn calm preparation into a deep run. No-one is doing cartwheels on the manicured lawns, but the mood is lighter than it has been at a World Cup for some time.
Germany, twice dumped out at the group stage in 2018 and 2022, have already wrapped up top spot in Group E. That alone feels like a psychological weight removed.
“Qatar was anything but successful for us as a team and for me personally,” Havertz says. He scored twice against Costa Rica in that doomed campaign, a personal flourish in a collective failure. “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.”
The early signs are encouraging rather than euphoric. A demolition of Curaçao, a late, nervy win over Côte d’Ivoire. Forty-two shots across those two games suggest something more important than scorelines: a team that actually 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.”
He has led that line with familiar understatement. Two goals against Curaçao – a penalty and a deft late dink – nudged his international record to 24 goals in 60 caps. It is the kind of return that would normally silence debate. With Havertz, it never quite does.
The ghost in the penalty area
Nagelsmann has made him his starting centre-forward. The numbers back the decision. The noise around it does not always follow.
Deniz Undav came off the bench to score twice and turn the Côte d’Ivoire game on its head, sparking calls for the Stuttgart striker to start against Ecuador. For Havertz, that sort of undercurrent is familiar. It has trailed him through his career in Germany.
“Probably because I don’t play in the Bundesliga,” he says. Toni Kroos and Ilkay Gündogan, he notes, felt something similar when they made their names abroad. “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 does not look or play like a traditional No 9. He never has. Havertz is a hybrid: a tall, gliding presence who began as a winger, spent long spells in midfield and only later became a spearhead under Peter Bosz at Bayer Leverkusen. He drifts, angles his runs, appears where defenders least want him and least expect him.
“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.”
Ghosts do not pose for the cameras. Havertz plays like that too. He is not the striker who stands on the penalty spot demanding service. He is the one who vacates it, dragging a centre-back into a channel so someone else can arrive.
“I can’t just wait around in the penalty area, I need to be involved,” he says. “I also make runs which I know sometimes look pointless, but I’m creating space for the players coming up behind me.”
It is the kind of work coaches adore and critics rarely mention. Mikel Arteta rarely misses a chance to praise him. Nagelsmann has tested the limits of his versatility. In a friendly against Turkey in 2023, he even started Havertz at left-back. The experiment lasted the full 90 minutes and produced a goal after five.
“If he were to ask me to do it again, I would,” Havertz says. No fuss, no drama. Just another job to be done.
Misread body language, real nerves
That calm exterior has always been a double-edged sword. When things are going badly, the same relaxed gait and unhurried touch are read as disinterest.
“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.”
The surface lies. Inside, the tension is real.
“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 operate on the edge without tipping over it, may yet decide how far Germany go. A first World Cup title since 2014 is a huge leap from a team that staggered through qualifying and arrived amid questions over almost every department. The draw is unforgiving too, with a potential last-16 clash against France looming.
Havertz, at least, is fit and firing after a year and a half that veered towards a medical report. Knee surgery knocked him off rhythm early in the season; a hamstring problem in 2024-25 followed. His contributions for Arsenal came through that fog.
“The last year and a half has gone badly for me,” he says bluntly. The World Cup offers a clean slate.
Lessons from Leverkusen, noise in North America
He has been here before, riding a wave of expectation with his country. At Euro 2024 on home soil, Germany were swept along by the noise and colour before Spain cut them down in a tight quarter-final. The atmosphere then felt intense. This, he says, is something else.
“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 conditions have been kinder than many feared. Germany have played in Toronto and in an air-conditioned arena in Houston, hardly the furnace some teams have faced. Havertz has not yet felt the need for a drink midway through the first half, which may explain his scepticism over Fifa’s mandated 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 is how he shapes Germany’s tournament from here. That, too, comes back to a lesson learned as a teenager at Leverkusen.
At 17, on the brink of the first team and with the game opening up in front of him, Havertz wanted to walk away from school and skip the Abitur, Germany’s university entrance exam. A staff member intervened, insisting he finish. It was framed not as an academic demand, but a test of character.
“At 17, you don’t think you need school any more,” he 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.”
He carried that through Budapest, through the conflicting emotions of a lost final and a title parade that could not be postponed. He carries it now into a World Cup where Germany have cleared the first hurdle, but nothing more.
The bus in Islington was never really about the route. It was about proving they could finish something. The question now is whether Havertz can help Germany do the same on the biggest stage of all.
