Leroy Sane needs a breakthrough moment for Germany this could be it

Subject to a late change of heart by national team manager Hansi Flick, Leroy Sane will play his 50th international match against Costa Rica at the World Cup tonight.

The 26-year-old’s inclusion in this must-win Group E finale looks like a formality after his impressive cameo in the 1-1 draw with Spain on Sunday, where his positive impact from the bench was almost as keenly felt as that of goalscorer Niclas Fullkrug.

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“Leroy did the stuff he can do on the pitch, the stuff we appreciate him for,” Flick’s assistant coach Marcus Sorg told reporters in a Zoom interview the next day. “Pacy dribbles, deep runs, creating overloads on the ball, creating goal-chances. He showed all of that.” 

The effusiveness of Sorg’s praise for Sane’s performance betrayed a strong sense of novelty.

For all his undoubted talent, the Bayern Munich forward has always been a strictly peripheral figure at international level.

The average supporter in a German pub will struggle to recall a meaningful performance of his for the Nationalmannschaft, well before that fifth beer starts clouding the memory. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that in those 20 minutes at the Al Bayt stadium at the weekend, Sane did more than in the previous 48 games wearing the Black and White.

Leroy Sane was only on the pitch for 20 minutes against Spain but still had an impact, completing six carries in that time.

There have been goals against Latvia, Belarus, Iceland, Estonia, Ukraine, Russia, Liechtenstein (three) and the Netherlands (two), but he has yet to score at a big competition.

That is less of a surprise once you realise Sane has only ever started one game in a major tournament — the 2-2 draw with Hungary at last year’s European Championship.

Flick’s predecessor, Joachim Low, never quite trusted him enough to make him a fulcrum in attack, and Sane’s ineffectiveness created a negative feeding loop between belief and behaviour. The former Manchester City winger could not be relied upon to produce special moments on special occasions, and hence, he didn’t. 

Low infamously left him out of his World Cup 2018 squad altogether and preferred Julian Brandt (now at Borussia Dortmund).

The explanations for that decision were vague — “Leroy hasn’t quite settled in the national team,” the 2014 World Cup-winning coach said at the time — but FA staff members privately talked about Sane having looked disengaged in training at the 2016 Euros and also mentioned Low’s disappointment that the player hadn’t agreed to play in the Confederations Cup in summer 2017, a competition Germany won. Sane said he needed to have surgery on his nose instead. 

His defending champions’ disastrous group exit from the previous World Cup forced Low to opt for a more dynamic, youthful setup, but progress for Sane was only ever intermittent, interrupted by severe injury (he ruptured a cruciate knee ligament in August 2019), the COVID-19 pandemic and the manager’s half-baked dabbling with a 3-4-3 formation that limited spaces for forwards.

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To Sane’s misfortune, his time with the squad coincided with the team’s decline. Or is it perhaps the other way around? 

Flick seems to trust him a lot more than his predecessor ever did, but that wasn’t always the case.

As coach of Bayern, Flick mostly played Sane out wide on the right, where he was often caught between going inside or driving to the byline on his weaker foot. He was often critical of the player’s work rate off the ball. In addition, local observers perceived a possible political dimension: Flick and Bayern sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic didn’t get on, and Sane, a €60million buy from City, was very much Salihamidzic’s marquee signing (Flick had internally argued for the purchase of Timo Werner instead).

Following generally decent but by no means brilliant performances in 2020-21, supporters in Munich seemed to have lost patience with the player at the start of current Bayern coach Julian Nagelsmann’s first campaign in charge. He was jeered during a 3-2 win over Cologne and substituted at half-time. 

His form soon picked up, though, thanks to Nagelsmann putting him in an inside-left spot that gave him more options on the ball and a much-improved attitude when it came to winning the ball back. Sane played the best football since winning the PFA Young Player of the year in 2018.

But then Bayern lost their momentum after the winter break and “things fell apart,” he said.

He wasn’t the only player struggling to reach their usual levels but he probably fell the most short relative to his talent.

“I’d like to see him explode on the pitch,” Salihamidzic demanded. Germany’s sporting director Oliver Bierhoff was worried about Sane’s performances, too. “It’s not an easy situation for him but he needs to help himself,” the former striker said in August of this year.

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The message was clear: Sane needed to try harder. 

And he has.

In an interview with The Athletic on the eve of this season, Sane came across very determined to finally live up to his promise.

“My motivation is playing against the best in the world, that’s the only way to find out how good I really am,” he said. “That’s what gets me going. That’s what drives me to put on my best performances. It’s pressure, yes, but I like that kind of pressure. Measuring up against the best in the world is the challenge I enjoy most.”

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The numbers say he’s done pretty well in that regard: FBref.com ranks his statistical profile closest to those of Neymar, Vinicius Junior, Luis Diaz, Paulo Dybala and club and country team-mate Serge Gnabry. They’re all different players, which shows that Sane, too, has progressed: at his best, he’s a winger, a No 10 and a striker, all at once. 

Ten goals for Bayern so far point to a prolific season. He’s been on it in the final third, switched on off the ball, and his two goals against Inter Milan in the 2-0 win at San Siro in the Champions League were particularly impressive.

Only a knee injury stopped his inclusion for the World Cup opener against Japan. He was badly missed at the Khalifa International stadium, especially by club colleague Jamal Musiala. The two of them love playing close to each other. 

Signs are that Flick and the rest of the Germany squad value his input more highly than at any time in his career before.

Thomas Muller made a point of name-checking his Bayern team-mate in the press conference on Tuesday — “I’d like to see him integrated into the attack,” the 33-year-old said — and Germany’s set-piece coach Mads Buttgereit told Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the player should be considered one of the best free-kick takers in the world: “Don’t forget Leroy Sane!”

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Hopefully, no one will after tonight. 

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(Top photo: Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)

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