Kai Havertz Reflects on Arsenal's Triumph and Germany's World Cup Aspirations

Kai Havertz remembers the silence first.

Not in the stadium, not in the dressing room in Budapest, but in his own head. Arsenal had just lost a Champions League final in the cruellest way imaginable, his early goal against Paris Saint-Germain wiped from history’s front page by the final scoreline. Within hours he was supposed to be back in London, on an open-top bus, parading the Premier League trophy through Islington.

A party after that? It felt wrong.

“To be honest, it was tough,” he says. “After the match, I initially thought we would call the whole thing off.”

He went to bed convinced Arsenal would scrap the parade. By the morning, the picture had changed.

What followed told him why. The streets of north London turned red and white, a moving mass of noise, colour and catharsis. A fanbase that had waited 22 years for a league title had no intention of letting grief for one lost final drown out joy for a season that had changed the club’s trajectory.

“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.”

Now he wants to add a World Cup to that list.

From Islington to Winston

The contrast could hardly be sharper. From a trophy bus crawling through London traffic to the quiet, manicured grounds of the Graylyn Estate in Winston, North Carolina, where Germany have built their World Cup base.

Here, the noise is controlled. The pressure is not.

Germany arrive at the knockout phase having already shaken off one burden. Group-stage exits in 2018 and 2022 left scars deeper than anyone in the DFB cared to admit. This time they have won Group E early, and the old anxiety that every misstep might trigger another collapse has eased.

“Qatar was anything but successful for us as a team and for me personally,” Havertz says. “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 doing laps of honour around the castle-like residence after a rout of Curaçao and a late win over Côte d’Ivoire. The opponents have been modest; the standards demanded are not. Yet the numbers hint at a team rediscovering its old instincts. Germany have unleashed 42 shots across those two games, and Havertz talks about something more important than data.

“We radiate a real joy in playing,” he says. “We move a lot, play offensively and create scoring chances. And we bounce back after conceding goals.”

He has done his part. Two goals against Curaçao – a penalty and a deftly lifted finish – kept his scoring rhythm with the national team intact. At 27, he already has 24 goals in 60 caps and sits as Julian Nagelsmann’s first-choice centre-forward, even if Deniz Undav’s impact off the bench against Côte d’Ivoire has fuelled calls for a change on Thursday against Ecuador.

That debate feels familiar. Havertz’s career has often unfolded in the shadows of louder narratives.

“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.”

The ghost in the penalty area

Maybe the misunderstanding starts with the way he plays. Havertz is not a centre-forward in the classic German mould. He is not a poacher who lives only between the posts, nor a chest-thumping target man. He is a shape-shifter.

“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.”

It is an image that suits him. Havertz glides more than he sprints, drifts into spaces that seem empty until the ball arrives. The ruthlessness is there, but it is quiet, almost understated.

That same instinct for space, that same willingness to do the unseen work, has made him a coach’s favourite. Mikel Arteta rarely misses a chance to praise him at Arsenal, and Nagelsmann has leaned heavily on his flexibility.

“I can’t just wait around in the penalty area, I need to be involved,” Havertz says. “I also make runs which I know sometimes look pointless, but I’m creating space for the players coming up behind me.”

His career path underlines the point. He began as a winger, then spent long stretches in midfield before Peter Bosz pushed him up front at Bayer Leverkusen. Nagelsmann even sent him out at left-back in a friendly against Turkey in 2023. Havertz scored after five minutes that night, a detail that said as much about his timing as his temperament.

“If he were to ask me to do it again, I would,” he says.

The perception of him as laid back has never fully gone away. The relaxed gait, the calm expression, the lack of theatrical gestures can be misread as indifference.

“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.”

That does not mean he feels nothing. Far from it.

“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.”

Pain, recovery and a new shot at history

That tension has been his constant companion over a difficult 18 months. Knee surgery disrupted the start of his season, a hamstring injury in 2024-25 followed, and yet he still delivered for Arsenal in a title-winning campaign.

“The last year and a half has gone badly for me,” he admits, a blunt assessment that makes his club performances look even more impressive. He has carried the knocks, the doubts, the rehabilitation sessions – and walked into this World Cup fit, sharp and hungry.

Germany’s path will not be gentle. A possible last-16 collision with France looms, a reminder that the old giants are back in the same corridor again, eyeing the same door. But Havertz knows what a World Cup can do for a career, and for a country still chasing its first title since 2014.

He has felt this surge before. At Euro 2024, on home soil, he was part of the Germany side that fell to Spain in a draining quarter-final, the host nation’s hopes swallowed by a late twist. The mood in North America, he says, is even more intense.

“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 heat, at least, has not yet become an enemy. Germany have played in Toronto and in the air-conditioned arena in Houston, avoiding the worst of the conditions that prompted Fifa’s 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 lies elsewhere: his runs, his finishing, his movement between the lines. His capacity to turn tension into clarity.

The lesson that stuck

Long before Champions League finals, World Cups and title parades, there was a different kind of decision in front of him. At 17, on the brink of a breakthrough at Leverkusen, Havertz wanted to walk away from school and skip the Abitur, Germany’s university entrance exam. Football, he thought, would be enough.

A staff member at the club stepped in. The message was simple: this was not about grades, it was about character.

“At 17, you don’t think you need school any more,” Havertz 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 finished the Abitur. He stayed the course. The idea lodged in his mind.

Now, as he stands at the centre of Germany’s attack, fresh from a season that veered from surgery to silverware, that same lesson hangs over everything. A World Cup rarely goes smoothly. There are setbacks, spells of pressure, days when the criticism returns.

Seeing it through to the end – not quitting when the easy option is to step off the bus – might be the difference between another painful exit and the kind of victory tour nobody will question.