Mustafi crowns his rise from obscurity with winner’s medal

Andy Lewis 06:14 15/07/2014
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  • From zero to hero: Skhodran Mustafi has appeared from nowhere.

    For all of Germany’s household names there was one hero among their squad of world champions who remains a stranger to people in the fatherland.

    Skhodran Mustafi has never played professionally in Germany, hasn’t lived there since he was 16, is Albanian by birth, has a contract with an Italian club and speaks perfect English with a Scouse twang.

    It’s a curious tale, and even more so when you consider just two years ago he wasn’t considered worthy of a place on the bench at English Premier League club Everton and only made his international debut in Brazil.

    A move to Genoan club Sampdoria in 2012 sent his career into overdrive and with less than 50 senior club appearances he’ll be paradaded with the rest of Germany’s victorious squad at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate today with a World Cup winner’s medal swinging from his neck. You can forgive him for not quite being able to comprehend his success.

    “The German language has a lot of words, but I don’t quite know how to describe the feeling I felt in those last minutes and in the last hour,” Mustafi admitted in the aftermath of Die Mannschaft’s 1-0 win over Argentina at Rio’s Maracana Stadium.

    “For a young 22-year-old, it is not so easy to understand what has just happened.

    “I played my first games for the national team here at the World Cup. At the last moment I had been called up for the tournament and now I am lifting the trophy. It is unbelievable. You cannot describe the feeling. We need time to understand what happened because right now I don’t know what I am feeling.

    “We will have a celebration and then we fly to Berlin and have a big party for us on Tuesday.”

    Mustafi’s luck was of course someone else’s misfortune, with him plucked from the standby list to replace the injured Marco Reus.

    But the fact he was in a position to benefit says a lot about his rise.

    He joined Everton in 2009 after being lured from Hamburg’s youth ranks. The path into then manager David Moyes’ first team was always going to be long.

    But after three years at Goodison Park he was still some way down the pecking order.

    Despite his obvious ability and consistency for the club’s reserves he wasn’t getting any nearer regular football and wasn’t even considered by Moyes to be the best under-21 centre-half at the club.

    “My time at Everton… I had to step on because I was not playing,” Mustafi explained.

    “I needed to play so I asked them if they could release me and go somewhere where I could play.

    “They were really professional with me and said it wasn’t a problem to give me away because I wasn’t playing. I needed to play to grow up.

    “I asked David Moyes to release me. They are a really professional club and they always thought about the players, not themselves. That is unusual.

    “They wanted to give the players the best opportunity and for me that was to move on and go somewhere where I could play.

    “When you are not playing, you are not happy, but I understood that I was quite young and still learning,” Mustafi added when asked about his relationship with Moyes.

    “I just needed a new challenge. I had to move on and play somewhere that would help me develop as a player. I took a step back to go to Serie B in Italy to make two steps forward and now I am here.”

    While his potential was not fully appreciated during his spell in England, Mustafi has always been on the radar of the German federation, picking up caps at every youth level from Under-16s upwards.

    And, quite naturally, he is now eyeing a long and successful senior international career.

    “We are a young squad but most of the players have won the biggest trophies like the Champions League,” he said.

    “So although we are young we have a lot of experience and that has made us strong. We have been a team, always together, and that has been the difference for me.”

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