Record national player Lothar Matthäus believes Kai Havertz has a great career ahead of him and enthuses in an interview with kicker vom Mittelfeldspieler von Bayer Leverkusen.
“He set the bar very high, for me he was the player of the season. If Havertz can maintain that high level, with that lightness, cleverness, presence on the court and goalscoring, then he could eventually become my successor as a world footballer,” said Matthäus. The 58-year-old was the only German to have been named world footballer in 1991.
Havertz would do another year in Leverkusen “good, he can play Champions League. After that, he’ll probably make the move to a big club. He has shown what he is capable of, even if Jogi Löw has slowed him down a bit in the national team, but that’s not bad,” said Matthew. Havertz “made an intelligent impression on him and kept his feet on the ground.”
Leverkusen’s goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky is also full of praise for what is currently probably the greatest talent in German football. Havertz, who finished second behind Marco Reus in the current Footballer of the Year poll, is already so far away, “that the boys here are just happy to play with him. That they even want to come to us to play with him. Players usually don’t have this elegance, this peace, this feeling for the room until they are 28 years old,” said Hradecky in the kicker.
He could “sometimes only watch from behind: And there it is a pleasure for me, what he does”, Hradecky continues: “Sometimes I stand in my gate and smile how easy it looks”.
In Leverkusen, offensive jewel Havertz still has a contract without an exit clause until June 2022, the last time he hinted at a premature departure. “I am honest: At some point the next step must come for me,” the 20-year-old told the Bild newspaper. There are enough interested parties, also the FC Bayern belongs to it.
