Not many professional footballers rise from the ashes. But Robin Gosens, the Germany and Inter Milan left back, is an exception. Born in the Rhineland town of Emmerich, three miles from the Dutch border, Gosens never played for an academy as a child. Instead, he played amateur football with his friends until he was 18 years old — mostly on cinder pitches, or as the surface is known in German, Asche.
“Which means that when you make a sliding tackle, everything gets opened up,” he says with a dry chuckle. But it wasn’t only in this rather painfully literal sense that amateur football got under his skin.
“What I loved about it is playing with my friends, playing without pressure, just having a fun time,” says Gosens, who could play against Liverpool in the second leg of the Champions League round-of-16 tie, in which Inter trail 2-0.
“Amateur football in Germany is very important. Sometimes the whole village comes to the game to support their team. You play and have a good time, and after the game just drink a beer with your opponent. You forget the week and you just enjoy the game in these hours.”
As a teenager Gosens was offered a trial with the under-19 team of Borussia Dortmund. But it was a crushing failure.
“Directly after this moment I was mentally destroyed,” he admits. “I had always had this dream to become a professional footballer, and then I had the opportunity, and I saw that I was so far away from being on the same level as them. I said to myself, ‘OK, maybe I’m not good enough, and maybe it’s good just to play with my friends, because this is the maximum I can do.’ But as the weeks went by, I said, ‘I have to continue dreaming.’ Dreams are for chasing.”
A few months later, Gosens got a phone call from a scout from the Dutch team Vitesse. “You need a little bit of luck,” he says modestly. “If I had played a terrible game when the scout was watching me, he wouldn’t have given me a call. Instead, I played a good game. He asked me if I wanted to come on a [trial] in Holland. I said, ‘Yeah OK, let’s go for it,’ and the beginning was made.”
Gosens never actually played for Vitesse, but a successful spell on loan at Dordrecht was enough to convince fellow Eredivisie outfit Heracles Almelo to take a chance on him. After two good seasons there he was snapped up by Atalanta, where he quickly established himself as one of the best wing backs in Serie A. After two solid campaigns, he went up another level, scoring nine goals in 2019-20 and 11 last season, then starring for Germany at Euro 2020.
Against Portugal, Gosens produced arguably the best individual performance of the tournament. He scored one goal, assisted another and forced an own goal as the defending champions were torn to shreds down his flank.
“This was one of the most beautiful feelings that I ever felt,” Gosens, 27, says. “It was too big to realise. I came from a small village, playing football with my friends. Representing my country, helping them to the victory in an important game, was too much for my head. I was laying down in my bed, reflecting all the pictures that came into my mind, and there were just too many. I didn’t sleep that night.”
In his spare time Gosens, who joined Inter on loan this summer, is studying psychology at the SRH Fernhochschule in Baden-Württemberg (a distance-learning institute similar to the Open University). “My aim is to use it after my [playing] career,” he says. “I want to do a master’s in sport psychology. I want to help people who are in the same situation that I was, because I had problems with pressure: not only from myself, but also from the club, the media, the fans. There are so many factors that you have to be aware of. I have the study, and I also know the industry, so I think that’s a [good] combination to help people, and that’s what I want to do after.”
As a wing back, Gosens plays one of the most important and demanding positions in the modern game. Last season, he was directly involved in as many goals, as the scorer or assister, as Federico Chiesa or Zlatan Ibrahimovic. And yet out of possession, he also has to be part of the defensive line. How does he understand where to be on the pitch when the game is pulling him in all directions?
“It’s a very difficult position: you have to defend, you have to attack, you always have to be there!” he says. “The coach gives you a structure of how he wants you to fill the position on the pitch, but he also gives me the space to fill it as I want to, and to follow my instinct. As a player, it’s very important to have the freedom to do what you want in the moment, because you can’t plan everything in a game, you always have to react to situations. You have to find a balance between the structure that the coach gives you, and the freedom to do what you want to do.”
Gosens has only just returned from five months out with a hamstring injury. The demands of elite football can be tough on body and mind, he acknowledges. “Every three days, you have to be on the top level, otherwise you cannot perform,” he says. “And then after the game you only have two days to be again at the top level. For me personally, it’s very difficult to handle these situations.”
But when the grind is hard, he remembers where he came from, and that rekindles the embers of a dream born on cinders. “I actually guess that’s one reason why I’m playing now at this top level,” he says. “Because I always kept in my heart the love for the game.”
Liverpool v Inter Milan
TV: BT Sport 2
Kick-off: Tuesday, 8pm
