2026-06-07 11:32:24
Antonio Rudiger isn’t worried about Germany being World Cup “underdogs”.
The 33-year-old defender’s team haven’t made it past the group stages of the competition since they lifted the trophy for the fourth time in 2014, and haven’t gone beyond the quarter finals in the European Championships since 2016, but the centre back isn’t too worried.
He told The Guardian newspaper: “As a huge country like Germany with huge football history, you don’t go to the World Cup just to say, ‘Hi, we are here.’
“You try to do the best you can. Of course, there are teams these days who are ahead of us. But it’s not bad sometimes maybe to be in the underdog position.”
Antonio’s domestic side, Real Madrid, have also failed to win a major trophy for the second successive season, but he dismissed reports of a club in crisis and insisted it is important to focus on moving forward rather than dwelling on what went wrong.
He said: “These things can happen that you go two years without winning a trophy.
“Of course, there’s a lot of noise and everything. There’s a lot of things … I wouldn’t say more important … but this is football, it can happen. You just need to do the right measures and be honest with yourself, make the right conclusions and go for another year. Very simple.
“What do you want us to do? At the end of the day we should cry still over the last seasons? No. Find the right conclusions and move forward, because what is lost now you cannot win back.”
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