Serge Gnabry and Jürgen Klopp's Leap of Faith in the Germany Squad

Minute 13. Not the 13th minute of a final, but the 13 scant minutes Serge Gnabry was given on the pitch in a 7-0 win over Union Berlin — his first appearance after more than five months out of the game. What matters lies elsewhere: Gnabry returned exactly one day after Jürgen Klopp announced his first Germany squad. A player who had not featured in a single match for five months kept his place, while several players in regular action were left behind. Among 16 first-time call-ups, what made me pause longest was an old name, kept on trust rather than form.

Klopp named 44 players for his first training camp, including no fewer than 16 debutants. Four names were permitted to stay for the entire period: Serge Gnabry, Nico Schlotterbeck, Jamal Musiala and Finn Dahmen. At 31, Gnabry sits among the oldest in the group — only captain Joshua Kimmich, also 31, and goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, 34, are older.

His physical condition is the real story. In mid-April, Gnabry suffered a serious adductor injury. That injury cost him the closing weeks of Bayern Munich's season, the World Cup in North America, the entire pre-season and the start of the new campaign. He came back one day after the squad announcement and played 13 minutes.

To gauge how far Klopp has gone, place this decision beside his reasons for leaving others out. Deniz Undav is absent because, according to Klopp, he has "not really found his way into the season yet". Yet Undav has played six matches and collected four assists, despite Achilles tendon problems. Leroy Sane, who featured in every competitive match this season for Galatasaray, was also cut for having "not really got his feet under the table yet". The man who has not set foot on a pitch at all is in.

The question is not whether Gnabry is talented. It is what kind of football he played last season. He recorded 21 goal involvements, and here is the detail every statistical summary skips: Gnabry does not hold one flank. He is a moving piece between Harry Kane, Michael Olise and Luis Diaz, and that movement gives Bayern Munich a dimension contemporary football is slowly erasing.

In the Champions League his traces are clearest. Against Paris Saint-Germain in the league phase, Gnabry produced an almost perfect half until Diaz's red card forced him off before the break. He shone in the round of 16 against Atalanta Bergamo and in the quarter-final against Real Madrid. In between, in February, something few expected happened: Gnabry signed a new contract with Bayern Munich until 2028.

The road to that contract began with a plan to sell him. In spring 2026, Bayern Munich regarded him as a sale candidate. Then the picture shifted: Thomas Müller said goodbye to Vancouver, Jamal Musiala suffered a serious injury, and the club did not want to pay for an expensive new signing. The No 10 position suddenly opened. Gnabry seized an unexpected chance, and seized it the way a man long doubted would.

The adductor injury arrived just before the decisive phase of the season. One may wonder what Bayern Munich could have done in the semi-final with a Gnabry in the form he showed against PSG in the league phase. That question belongs to the past. The present is far more brutal: after an impressive World Cup, Bayern Munich signed Ismael Saibari from PSV Eindhoven for 50 million euros. Musiala is edging back. Michael Olise and Lennart Karl can both play centrally.

Head coach Vincent Kompany said plainly: "We have not forgotten how good he was last season." He added a condition: if Gnabry returns to that level, "everyone else in that position also has to be good". That is where the positive competition Bayern Munich want comes from.

For Klopp, trust was placed before his player touched a ball. Gnabry said: "For me, it is a very big plus that he is taking me with him and that I stay in rhythm there." He also acknowledged he may celebrate his Germany comeback in one of the four matches of this camp. The pitch never lies — only the storyteller knows how to hide his loneliness behind every goal.

The whole narrative around Gnabry runs on an unspoken logic: a man absent from a forgettable World Cup carries less baggage. That assumption is comfortable and doubtful. At 31, Gnabry is no longer a young factor. He was not absent for protection; he was absent through injury. Absence is being rewarded, presence punished. Not long ago Gnabry himself symbolised stagnation in German football: too expensive, too injury-prone, placed alongside Sane, Leon Goretzka and at times even Kimmich.

Read more closely, what is being selected here is not form. Undav has six matches and four assists. Sane played every match for Galatasaray. Both were cut for the same reason. Gnabry has not played a minute. The stated criteria do not match the choice made, and that gap reveals what is truly being picked: a type of player.

Gnabry belongs to the category modern data systems file as hard to define — neither a pure left winger nor a pure No 10 — and that is precisely why evaluation models tend to overlook him. Contemporary football is homogenising the flanks: inverted wingers with the same movement pattern, the same destination. A man who wanders between the lines like Gnabry produces no neat numbers at a fixed position, but produces something else — space for team-mates.

I rewatched the PSG footage several times on a winter night in London. What stayed was not a specific action, but the way he appeared in three different zones within a single attacking sequence. Tactics are prose, moments are poetry — and a match is where the two devour each other. Gnabry's problem is that he can only prove this by playing, and his body has not yet allowed it.

Klopp did not choose a man in good health. He chose a man he had seen at the hardest moment. Some talents never appear in rankings — they hide in the eyes of those who believe in what has not yet happened. Four matches will answer whether that trust still has ground to stand on, and if Gnabry gets an evening of return, its value will not lie in the minutes he is given, but in what he does with them.