What does Joshua Kimmich do on a day off? Quite simply: what he always does. Go where it hurts. Less than 24 hours after a Sunday business trip to the Rhineland, the star of FC Bayern did not use the day off from training to rustle a little through the autumn leaves with his two children on this golden October Monday, but instead looked after other children. During a “encouragement campaign for seriously ill children”, Kimmich visited the children’s palliative care center in the Großhadern Clinic and then also the Hauner Children’s Hospital.
The initiator of the campaign is David Kadel, a football mentality coach who has been working with players and coaches and giving lectures for companies for 20 years. His book “Football God: Experience reports from the holy lawn” with a foreword by Jürgen Klopp was a bestseller, for his “Football Bible” on the subject of spirituality, David Alaba, Lewis Holtby and other footballers reached the keyboard in addition to Klopp. Last year, Kadel founded the Corona Mutmach project “How to fight giants” with celebrities such as Samuel Koch, Heiko Herrlich, Mathias Ginter, Thilo Kehrer, Chancellor’s grandson Andreas Adenauer, Söhne Mannheims-Co-founder Michael Herberger and 30 other celebrities. For this project, thanks to the financial support of Philipp J. Müller, the founder of Europe’s most successful investment academy, not only a “encouragement book” but also “encouragement events” were created to encourage disadvantaged people. “Last week we were in Stuttgart with two VfB players, next week we’re going to Frankfurt with two Eintracht kickers,” said Kadel.
The fact that he was able to get Bayern star Kimmich on board for Munich in addition to his friend Michael Köllner, the coach of TSV 1860 Munich, is due to his second home in Swabia, where he grew up in the mid-1960s. He knows the educator Steffi Rottler through Schwaben-Connections, who organized the illustrations for the Mutmach book and also contributed a story: that of professional surfer Bethany Hamilton, who lost an arm after a shark attack, but still relied on professional Surfed level further. “The stories based on real events have always fascinated me,” says Rottler, who is also Kimmich’s cousin: “We grew up in the same village.”
Kimmich himself doesn’t want to say anything about his commitment: “I’m there for the children.” And he brought them gifts: Advent calendar and mascot Berni, from the blue department, Köllner pulls lion caps and the like out of the bag. The children are very excited. Athina, for example, who has been recovering from an operation for months, had a crown tucked into her hair. She can only communicate with the thumbs up or down, “but she gets everything,” says Monika Führer, head of the children’s palliative center. And that children are honest in a disarming way, Joshua Kimmich learns from the young Elisa, who sits in a wheelchair. She is happy about the visit, but she just loves Thomas Müller.