Fulham’s former right-back is now the German club’s manager and says inspiring Julian Nagelsmann can beat PSG in the Champions League semi-finals on Tuesday.
Moritz Volz’s arrangements for this interview took an unexpected turn. Once upon a time, the quirky and self-destructive content of his online page attracted almost as much attention as a forged spell in the Premier League with Fulham. However, he just discovered that volzy.com colonized through someone claiming to be a Japanese face cream trader.
“You buy some and see if it’s good,” he suggests, urging him to panic the pixelation of the video call. “No, I just stopped going on like this for a while, then the domain was taken through someone. Nothing to do with me right now.
The last 15 months of his career have been virtually wrinkle-free. Volz speaks from the RB Leipzig hotel in Lisbon and this fact is proof that things went according to plan. He will be on The sidelines on Tuesday night as Julian Nagelsmann’s assistant as they make history through the game in a Champions League semi-final with Paris Saint-Germain.
It was an intense and deeply rewarding dive into a first formative role that arose from an unforeseen phone call. While Volz was looking for a task with a greater duty after 4 years in search of Arsenal, his first English club as a player, he suspected that Nagelsmann was ranked as a teammate for his own arrival in Leipzig last summer.
“It was pretty unannounced,” he says. “But he had a position where he had learned enough in the Scouting role. I was in a position for a new challenge and had other things to do; fortunately, before the signatures were made or the agreements were finalised, the call came. and I didn’t want much time for the one I was really looking to seize this opportunity. Sitting here now is a wonderful feeling and it doesn’t turn out to be the worst resolution I’ve ever made. “
Such a sudden leap meant what he described as “a bloodless start” and a rapid adaptation. While Volz had enjoyed his past paintings, being an explorer meant “observing, evaluating, scoring all the time… but you’re never active in the game, you just paint on a safe component of the food chain.”
Now it was entirely convenient. After crossing as a young right-hander the peak years of Arsene Wenger, running for an organization with incredibly high standards, the thirst for innovation was not new. However, the number of tasks entrusted to a Leipzig coach was a revelation.
“Because of the way the role is played, I actually discovered myself at the center of all the operations involving the players,” he says. “The medical team, sports scientists, analysts, psychologist, even men on the team. Everyone comes to you for data and planning. It points to an emphasis, the cutting and the thrust of the season, on “working the minds of the players when you have to save your legs”.
However, at the center of each and every one of the things is Nagelsmann. At 33, he has been a junior at Volz for four and a half years and his achievements this season, regardless of Leipzig’s fate opposite PSG, showed all the enthusiasm around his ordinary talent. “His football brain is so evolved that even me, as someone who played football for 20 years, who watched him for 4 years and who had many other perspectives, I feel like I’m learning with him every day. Volz says. “It’s valuable to me and exciting to be around someone so inspiring in the way you handle certain situations.”
No subject is forbidden when Nagelsmann sits down with Volz and his co-assistant, Dino Toppm-ller, 39, recently named. Both are entrusted with the painting independently greatly, channeling their minds to the manager. The trio’s youth reflect that of the Leipzig team, which finished third in the Bundesliga, and even that of a club born in 2009.
It’s an exceptional tale that will never unite opinions. However, he would find it very difficult to locate footballers who think negatively about Volz. He remains his friendly, interested and sociable personality and admits that he had to paint at some distance while overseeing an elite player organization.
“I’d say I track my way like this, ” he said. “It’s a year of fun and a very fast time. Especially at first, it was hard enough to have enough time to think and perceive everything. I feel like you want time to think, be informed in classes and really grow.
“But I think it helps to be a player. You know when you’re leaving alone and when it’s a good time to have a center-to-center. You also know you’re only dealing with 11, maybe 12 or thirteen.” satisfied people and so many disgruntled types that you want to deal with with at least the same attention. But that’s what I like about training, those aren’t conditions I’m afraid of. The wonderful merit of training is that you care a lot about people. “
Volz believes that a trainer at this point will have to “associate ambition with hard paints, smart paints, smart paints and integrity.” They are also smart words for the overall technique of a club whose clarity and effectiveness dishonor better-known institutions.
Leipzig’s appointments with Red Bull and his upcoming links to his operations in Salzburg and New York, among others, are truly advantageous. But there is a sense that, in explaining its success, it can be too easy for others to hide it when one can be very informed of their processes. As things stand, they are still considered upstarts, disruptors, and Volz believes they enjoyed it this summer.
“We entered this festival without being the team that no one needs to face,” he says, pointing out that the alien format of the ultimate tournament may have frightened some of its classics. Atletico Madrid, who rightly beat him on Thursday, could have been the one to avoid.
But Volz believes That Leipzig has proven that it is “a tough, full of effort but also complete of quality” by winning spectacularly. They were sharper, faster, but a little enthusiastic. Despite all their youth, despite the sale of their forward Timo Werner to Chelsea, they were part of the style of a european fashion team, balanced and meticulously pierced.
“When you’re in the Champions League semi-finals and you’ve beaten established groups like Tottenham and Atlético, you know you have what it takes to get through to the end,” he said. “We are far from saying that we are dead, but we have to make sure that the PSG will locate this Array in a difficult way. We face another animal, a team that has the right and perhaps greater individual quality, in fact in the lead, where we are Will face some of the most productive players in the world, but we remain convinced that as a team we can fit them together.
“Do I care that we probably liked winning? No, I don’t. I know what we can and can’t do, and I actually see an opportunity for us to stay here a little longer.”