MY ACCOUNT
Jamal Musiala is one of the best talents Germany has ever produced, according to team-mate Leon Goretzka.
Musiala has burst onto the scene for his club side Bayern Munich as well as his national team, leading the former with 11 goals in this season’s Bundesliga and impressing at the World Cup in Qatar despite Germany’s shock early exit.
Goretzka plays alongside Musiala for both club and country, and he ranks the 20-year-old as one of the finest players his national side have ever produced.
“Jamal might be one of the biggest talents Germany has ever had because he’s already able to constantly deliver good performances,” Goretzka told UEFA.com.
“He doesn’t have many ups and downs. The fact that he’s already in our starting XI every week shows that. He helps us achieve our goals.
“He’s extremely good on the ball, in narrow spaces, and he creates a lot of danger. He has outstanding qualities. If he keeps working like that and stays fit, the sky is the limit for him.”
Goretzka, 28, feels it is up to him and his fellow senior players to help young prospects reach their potential, saying: “It’s my task to help younger players and to serve as an example. Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben were the players who helped me when I came to Bayern.
“So I see it as my task. I won’t tell [Musiala] how to dribble or what to do every day, because he knows best what to do, but I want to help him on the pitch, give him that strength or be there for him when he has a question, and help him in situations he doesn’t know about yet, like all the media things that can be expected of him in the future. All of us in the team want to help him.”
Bayern face Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final, and having been a key member of the team that won Europe’s top club prize in the 2019-2020 season, Goretzka is hoping his side can lift the famous trophy again this campaign.
The German champions came through a tough group that included Inter and Barcelona, winning all six of their games to cruise through to the round of 16 where they then comfortably saw off Paris Saint-Germain, who they beat in the 2019-2020 final, 3-0 on aggregate.
“It’s [Champions League] certainly the Everest of club football,” Goretzka said. “If you look at the results so far, we have been very dominant this season.
“I think a lot of people in Germany gasped when they first saw our group. It was called the group of death with Inter, Barcelona and Bayern. It was clear one of those three big clubs would have to exit the competition at the group stage but we were sure it wasn’t going to be us. In the end, we came through the group stage very confidently.”
Bayern will be without striker Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting for the first leg against City, with the striker not travelling to Manchester because of a knee problem that ruled him out of the 1-0 Bundesliga victory at Freiburg on Saturday.
