Kai Havertz: From Budapest Heartbreak to World Cup Ambition

Kai Havertz remembers the silence first. Not in the stadium, but in his own head.

Budapest. Champions League final. Arsenal broken by Paris Saint-Germain in the cruellest way imaginable, his early goal – for almost an hour the difference – wiped from history’s front page in a heartbeat. The next day, 2pm, the open-top bus was booked to roll through Islington with the Premier League trophy. The club’s first league title in 22 years. A party decades in the making.

He could barely look up, never mind wave.

“To be honest, it was tough,” he says now. In the rawness of the night, he wondered if the whole thing should be scrapped. How do you climb onto a bus and grin for a million people when your dream has just been ripped away?

By morning, the view had changed.

From Budapest pain to Islington catharsis

What followed in north London was not a parade. It was a release. A city pouring out 22 years of frustration, hope and finally joy into the streets.

“We had a huge season behind us,” Havertz says. “The club had gone 22 years without a league title so that had to be celebrated properly with the fans.”

He speaks of the colours, the faces, the noise. Of streets heaving with people who did not care about the pain of Budapest as much as they cared about the rebirth of Arsenal. It cut through his own turmoil.

“I have to say I’ve never experienced anything like it. So many people on the streets, so many supporting us. It ranks among my top three experiences as a professional.”

And now, in a very different corner of the world, he is chasing another one for that list.

A new Germany, a new tension

Havertz is talking at Germany’s World Cup base in Winston, North Carolina. The Graylyn Estate, with its castle-like façade, is a long way from Islington High Street, but the emotional stakes feel just as sharp. This is a national team that has spent six years carrying the weight of failure.

Group-stage exits in 2018 and 2022 turned the four-time world champions into a punchline. The burden followed them into this tournament. This time, though, they have already done something basic yet vital: they have got out of the group. Winners of Group E, job one complete.

Havertz knows the scars well. In Qatar, he scored twice against Costa Rica, a desperate late surge that still ended in elimination.

“Qatar was anything but successful for us as a team and for me personally,” he says. The tone is matter-of-fact, not bitter. “There’s a different energy in our squad now. I was quickly convinced that things would go better this year. We knew we had a duty not to fail early on again. We are Germany. But now the tournament is really just beginning.”

No one is cartwheeling around the manicured lawns of Graylyn. They have beaten Curaçao heavily and edged past Côte d’Ivoire late on; nobody is handing out medals for that. What matters is the volume of chances: 42 shots across those two games, waves of attacks, a team finally looking like it enjoys itself again.

“We radiate a real joy in playing,” Havertz says. “We move a lot, play offensively and create scoring chances. And we bounce back after conceding goals.”

The fun, he insists, is back.

The ‘ghost’ at centre-forward

Havertz scored twice against Curaçao: one from the spot, one a delicate late dink. His numbers for Germany are quietly imposing – 24 goals in 60 caps – and he is firmly Julian Nagelsmann’s starting centre-forward. Even so, Deniz Undav’s brace off the bench to turn the Côte d’Ivoire game has sparked calls for the Stuttgart striker to start against Ecuador.

The noise is familiar. Havertz has lived most of his career with the feeling that his work is being judged from the corner of the eye rather than head-on.

“Probably because I don’t play in the Bundesliga,” he says. “It was the same at times with Toni Kroos and Ilkay Gündogan, who were abroad for years. It is often said about me: ‘Havertz didn’t score again, he’s useless!’. And when I do score, they say: ‘Well, he’s supposed to, it’s about time!’ I don’t hold it against anyone; that’s perfectly normal.”

He shrugs it off, but there is a pattern here: a player whose game is built on subtlety in a culture that often craves spectacle. Havertz is not a chest-beating No 9. He is something stranger, slipperier.

“Defenders should never know where I am, where I’m going, what I’m planning, or where I’ll be at any given moment,” he says, in an interview arranged with Die Zeit. “That’s the worst for them. I try to be like a ghost to defenders.”

It is not a boast. It is a job description.

He drops deep, he drifts wide, he makes runs he knows will never show up on any highlights reel. “I can’t just wait around in the penalty area, I need to be involved,” he says. “I also make runs which I know sometimes look pointless, but I’m creating space for the players coming up behind me.”

Managers love that. Mikel Arteta rarely misses a chance to praise him. Nagelsmann has tested his versatility to the limit. Havertz started as a winger, spent years as a midfielder, then was pushed up front by Peter Bosz at Bayer Leverkusen. Nagelsmann even started him at left-back in a friendly against Turkey in 2023. Havertz scored after five minutes.

“If he were to ask me to do it again, I would,” he says. No drama, no fuss. Just the job.

Misread body language, very real nerves

That unfussy demeanour has always cut both ways. When Havertz glides through a game, some see elegance. Others see apathy.

“I’m aware of the debates that I’m too laid back or my body language is wrong,” he says. “That always comes up when I’m not playing well. But I’m not the sort of person who dwells on it too much. It used to be different. I don’t brood on things any more.”

He does feel the pressure, though. It just stays inside.

“I know it doesn’t show from the outside, but I feel it,” he says. “Before a Champions League final, or at a World Cup. Or before penalties. I need that tension to stay focused.”

That tension might yet define Germany’s tournament. The path ahead is hardly smooth. A possible last-16 meeting with France looms. The build-up was messy, the doubts loud. But Havertz is fit again after a brutal 18 months that saw knee surgery derail the start of his season and a hamstring injury interrupt 2024-25.

“The last year and a half has gone badly for me,” he says, without self-pity. Those setbacks make his impact at Arsenal – leading the line, scoring important goals, adapting again – all the more striking. They also sharpen his hunger to make this World Cup count.

Heat, hydration breaks and a lesson at 17

The World Cup itself has felt different to him. Havertz was part of the Germany side that, riding a wave of home fervour, fell agonisingly short against Spain in the Euro 2024 quarter-finals. North America, he says, is louder still.

“The atmosphere is amazing. I was really excited before the Euros in Germany, too. A World Cup is even bigger. There’s incredible energy in the stadiums.”

The feared heat has not hit him yet. Germany have played in Toronto and in an air-conditioned arena in Houston. No 23rd-minute desperation for water, no visible wilting. He is no fan of Fifa’s hydration breaks.

“They’re usually annoying, especially when you’ve just had two or three good situations and feel your flow is being interrupted,” he says. “But others decide that.”

What he can control is his own path, something he learned early. At 17, on the brink of breaking through at Leverkusen, Havertz wanted to walk away from school and skip the Abitur, Germany’s university entrance exam. Football felt like everything. A staff member at the club stopped him, insisting he finish.

“At 17, you don’t think you need school any more,” he says. “At that age, you also don’t think about injuries or how things can suddenly take a completely different turn. It was a life lesson for me: seeing things through to the end instead of just quitting.”

Now, in a country far from home, with a nation’s expectations back on his shoulders and another tournament poised on a knife-edge, that lesson hangs over him again.

Germany have started to repair their reputation. Havertz has started to reshape his. The question is simple, and it will not wait: can the ghost finally leave a mark no one can ignore?