National team
“Fülle” and “Duckschi” internationally: friends in the DFB jersey
The national players Niclas Füllkrug (l) and Marvin Ducksch are reunited. photo
© Arne Dedert/dpa
The “ugly birds” are reunited in the national team. One of them didn’t really trust the call from the national coach at first.
At least for a few minutes it was like the best of times in Bremen. Julian Nagelsmann left Niclas Füllkrug and Marvin Ducksch playing next to each other on the small pitch at the end of the first training session before the Turkey test – in blue instead of green and white jerseys. The self-proclaimed “ugly birds,” who are somewhat unexpectedly reunited in the national soccer team, will not have too many opportunities to score goals together, but in the national jersey.
“We can still do it,” assured BVB professional Füllkrug on Tuesday. “We would continue to get along really well.” In Nagelsmann’s European Championship planning, the DFB selection has enough to do with “first perfecting a system”. And as of now, there would only be room for one of the two friends as a striker – despite the “super” time of the congenial duo last Bundesliga season.
“It came together so well that it just had to work together,” said Füllkrug, who became top scorer in the Werder jersey with Ducksch at his side. Accordingly, he was “hoping for it, and a little bit expecting it,” that Nagelsmann would invite Ducksch for the first time for the games against Turkey in the full Berlin Olympic Stadium on Saturday and three days later in Vienna against Austria. The “ugly birds,” as he once called himself and his friend, “goes international,” said Füllkrug.
Silent doubts about the Nagelsmann call
Ducksch said he first thought it was a “fake” when Nagelsmann called, but then quickly recognized the voice of the national coach. Contact with Füllkrug followed “relatively quickly”: I’m there. Ducksch reported that he “inquired a little bit”.
Füllkrug made his international debut a year ago in Oman and scored straight away. Nagelsmann’s predecessor, Hansi Flick, tolerated rather than loved the crowd favorite despite his strong goal quota. “We hold a position where you often get better with age,” said Füllkrug, who at 30 is almost exactly a year older than Ducksch. “It’s a right and good decision that the national coach sets up based on performance.”
Crazy helps – so does friendship
Nagelsmann also justified Ducksch’s appointment with his “good degree of craziness” that the DFB selection needed. “Especially when players come off the bench as jokers.” The fact that Ducksch knows the “abundance very, very well” was also “a component” in the coaching team’s considerations.
Players had proven time and again in the (successful) years that friends in the national team can help with the extremely important domestic climate. In November 2023 it will be “Fülle” and “Duckschi”, whose classification as “ugly” was meant “very sarcastic” from the start, according to Füllkrug. “There were a lot of great duos that we can’t compare ourselves with,” said the 30-year-old, who took the step to join BVB in the summer and is currently struggling with sporting crises even more than Ducksch, who still lives in Bremen.
Success is not luck
In the first training session in front of selected fans and DFB employees, he was able to adapt “relatively quickly,” said Ducksch, who, as a late professional career starter, played for a long time in the second division and was rated moderately. “After the call, I definitely thought back to where I was a few years ago, but I didn’t question myself with, ‘What if?'” he said. “It’s part of being human to make mistakes and it’s part of being able to learn from mistakes.”
In the past few years he has “continually worked on myself,” said Ducksch. During the warm-up program on Tuesday, which lasted a good quarter of an hour, he and his teammates heard, among other things, the hip-hop song from the loud speakers on the sidelines: “Success is not luck.”