A player who has been stated as having a unique blend between Toni Kroos’ drive and Mesut Ozil’s beautiful technique, Leverkusen need to do all they can to try and stave off interest from Europe’s elite, Havertz’ rapid improvement is one of the reasons why they’ve managed to get back to being in contention for a place in the Champions League after a weak mid-table finish last season and they have an exciting squad in the making with the likes of Leon Bailey also looking like a great prospect, let’s face it though, both of them will probably end up at Bayern before anyone has even read this article.
He’s a beneficiary of everyone’s acknowledgement that the German national team needed overhauling and as such, he and his younger compatriots are being blooded in to try and create a new wave of annoying dominance. In fact, he subsequently became the first German international born in 1999 and found himself on the bench for Germany’s dramatic 3-2 win over Holland recently alongside other exciting prospects such as Johannes Eggestein, Jonathan Tah and Julian Brandt, with Leroy Sane and Joshua Kimmich starting the game. Incidentally and probably weirdly for Havertz, one of his idols, Toni Kroos, also started alongside him on the bench.
It’s in the ease of his play that most people have been impressed I think. Havertz manages to glide past players and then he will manage to deliver the Ozil-esque through ball that no-one else even sees to unlock Bundesliga defences. He has also added goals to his game this season, scoring 10 in the league and alone with plenty of games still to run and 3 in the Europa League, an impressive return for any 19 year old, let alone a centre midfielder. In fact, having looked it up, he’s behind only Paul Pogba and Gylfi Sigurdsson for goals from central midfield.
He’s also tall and powerful, meaning he can make those bursting runs required and it’s this characteristic, aligned with his technical ability, which leads me to believe that a comparison to Michael Ballack would be more accurate to Mesut Ozil.
Essentially, he’s got everything in his locker to establish himself as a world class centre midfielder, in fact, I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t. For goodness sake though don’t just go straight to Bayern and sit on the bench!
False 9 