Kai Havertz: From Heartbreak to World Cup Hope

Kai Havertz remembers the silence first.

Not in the stadium in Budapest, where Arsenal’s Champions League dream had just been ripped away in the cruellest fashion, but in his own head. He had scored early against Paris Saint-Germain, lived with the idea of being the match-winner for almost an hour, and then watched it all disappear. Back in the dressing room, the next day’s schedule felt absurd.

A Premier League trophy parade through Islington. Open-top buses. A million people on the streets. Confetti, music, euphoria.

“After the match, I initially thought we would call the whole thing off,” he says now. The idea of waving from a bus less than 24 hours after a final like that felt wrong. Hollow.

By the next morning, the picture had changed. Arsenal had ended a 22-year wait for a league title. That had to mean something. That had to be marked.

“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.” The parade became exactly that: a release, a roar, a shared exhale. “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.”

From Budapest to Winston: a reset with Germany

Havertz is talking at Germany’s World Cup base in Winston, North Carolina, a leafy, insulated corner of the tournament where the noise from back home feels distant but the stakes do not. The pressure that built after group-stage exits in 2018 and 2022 has eased a touch: Germany have already wrapped up top spot in Group E.

He has lived the other side of this story. In Qatar he scored twice against Costa Rica and still watched Germany go out at the first hurdle again. “Qatar was anything but successful for us as a team and for me personally,” he says. This time the mood is different. “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 throwing a party at the Graylyn Estate, the castle-like base where Julian Nagelsmann’s team are holed up. A demolition of Curaçao and a late win over Côte d’Ivoire have settled nerves, not sparked celebrations. Yet 42 shots across those two games tell their own story. Havertz senses something important: “We radiate a real joy in playing. We move a lot, play offensively and create scoring chances. And we bounce back after conceding goals.”

The fun, he insists, is back.

The “ghost” at centre-forward

Havertz’s own contribution has been typically understated on the surface, decisive underneath. Two more goals against Curaçao – a penalty and a deft late dink – pushed him to 24 in 60 caps. At 27, he is Nagelsmann’s first-choice centre-forward, even if Deniz Undav’s impact from the bench against Côte d’Ivoire has sparked calls for a change on Thursday against Ecuador.

That debate feels familiar. Havertz’s career has often unfolded in the shadows of louder narratives, especially in Germany. “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.”

His response is not to shout louder, but to disappear. Literally, in his own mind.

“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.”

He is not the centre-forward who plants himself between the posts and waits. “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.”

Managers love that. Mikel Arteta rarely misses a chance to praise his intelligence and selflessness. Nagelsmann has tested that versatility to the limit. Havertz started as a winger, grew into a midfielder, and was pushed up front by Peter Bosz at Bayer Leverkusen. Nagelsmann went a step further in 2023, starting him at left-back in a friendly against Turkey. Havertz scored after five minutes.

“If he were to ask me to do it again, I would,” he says. No fuss, no drama, just a job to do.

Misread body language, real tension

That calm exterior has always been a talking point. The relaxed gait, the unhurried style, the impression – to some – that he is too laid back for the chaos of elite football.

“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 not always so serene. “I know it doesn’t show from the outside, but I feel it,” he says of the nerves. “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 trust the moment rather than the noise, might be what Germany need most now. They have not lifted a World Cup since 2014. The buildup to this one was littered with doubts, and a potential last-16 clash with France looms. Havertz, though, is finally healthy after a brutal run.

“The last year and a half has gone badly for me,” he admits. Knee surgery early in the season, a hamstring problem in 2024-25 – the interruptions were constant. That he still produced for Arsenal in a title-winning campaign says plenty about his resilience, even if he is not the type to trumpet it.

The hunger to turn the page is obvious.

Lessons from Leverkusen, echoes for a World Cup

Havertz has already felt the surge of a home crowd carrying a team to the edge. At Euro 2024, he was part of the Germany side that rode a wave of host-nation emotion before being edged out by Spain in the quarter-finals. North America feels even more charged.

“The atmosphere is amazing,” he says. “I was really excited before the Euros in Germany, too. A World Cup is even bigger. There’s incredible energy in the stadiums.”

Heat has not been a major factor yet – Germany have played in Toronto and in the air-conditioned arena in Houston – so he has not experienced the desperate thirst that prompted Fifa’s hydration breaks. He is not a fan of them anyway. “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 decide is how much of this tournament he shapes.

When he was 17 at Leverkusen, on the brink of a first-team breakthrough, Havertz wanted to walk away from school, skip the Abitur and lean fully into football. A staff member stopped him. Finish it, they told him. Prove you can see something through.

“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 kept going then. He kept going after Budapest. He keeps going now, as the ghost in the box, the lightning rod for criticism, the quiet constant in a Germany side trying to remember how to win a World Cup.

The question is no longer whether he can live with the tension. It is how far that instinct, and that refusal to quit, can carry a team and a country this time.