Arsenal ace Kai Havertz played as a left back for Germany last night with mixed reviews from the German media.
Julian Nagelsmann took the strange decision of playing Kai Havertz as a left back for Germany on Saturday night.
We would forgive any Arsenal fans for being a little baffled upon seeing the Germany side to face Turkey.
Nagelsmann decided to go with Havertz at left back despite having a natural option on the bench in RB Leipzig star David Raum.
The experiment seemed to work well at first; Havertz opened the scoring for Germany just five minutes into the game.
Things turned later on though as Havertz gave away a penalty for handball, allowing Turkey to claim a 3-2 victory.
German media react to Kai Havertz display
Germany are supposed to be building towards their home Euro 2024 campaign but just keep losing home games.
The German media unsurprisingly aren’t impressed and offered some mixed views on Havertz’s display.
Sportbuzzer rated Havertz at four out of five, with five being at the lower end of their rating scale.
“It was completely unusual for him to be deployed as a left-back, but Havertz showed off his offensive qualities with his goal to take the lead. Finished confidently in the middle in front of the goal. Defensively solid, his side was at least less vulnerable than the other wing. The Arsenal player won a few crucial aerial duels. But caused the penalty with his hand,” they wrote.
It was a similar story from sport.de, who went with a 4.5 rating whilst suggesting that Havertz’s play is just ‘too risky’ to be played as a defender.
“Nagelsmann called him to the left side of the defence and promptly made it 1-0 (5th). However, his style of play was far too risky in his own defensive third. On top of that, caused a hand penalty. The experiment didn’t work.”
Express went with a 3.5 rating, stating ‘a surprising and questionable experiment. Gave us the early lead, but with difficulty as a left back’.
Don’t expect to see Mikel Arteta changing Havertz role
We are in the age of midfielders playing as full backs where managers love to bring full backs into midfield, with Mikel Arteta one of them.
Oleksandr Zinchenko has played in that way throughout his Arsenal career and we can expect to see more of that tactic moving forward.
Even with that in mind, we can’t see Havertz playing in that role for Arsenal.
The former Chelsea man does his best work going forward rather than offering width or coming inside to build attacks.
This was a curious decision from Nagelsmann in the first place and Arteta surely won’t be following suit any time soon.
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