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Drawing on his own family’s experience, the Real Madrid and Germany defender is advocating for refugees and challenging stereotypesAs a child, Antonio Rüdiger would look out of his bedroom window to see whether anyone was playing on the field it overlooked. It was not a big pitch, but it had two goals, enough room for six-a-side and was where a young Rüdiger honed the skills that would take him to the top.He grew up in Neukölln, Berlin, in a community largely made up of refugees, where his parents settled after fleeing civil war in Sierra Leone. It was, by his own account, a tough area, and football kept him out of trouble.Rüdiger, preparing to represent Germany at the World Cup, says: “We didn’t have phones to call each other: ‘Hey, let’s link up.’ No. We just looked out of the window, we saw there are guys playing football, so let’s go. That was the call. This is the nice thing about Germany; you have everywhere those types of fields. Just these days they’re not much used any more because we’re human beings and we changed to a digital life.”The Real Madrid defender has opened up about his upbringing after joining the “Gamechanging Team” of the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) – a group of footballers with displacement backgrounds standing with refugees and challenging stereotypes. Rüdiger does not want you to feel sorry for him for enduring hardships. Far from it. He remembers a vibrant, close community with “a lot of togetherness”.“If someone didn’t have enough food or milk, they visited a neighbour and asked,” he says. “We would share everything. It was this type of feeling. It was one of the best experiences in my lifetime.”“If someone couldn’t speak the language, the football language we all understood. It was great and this follows until today. Today you play with so many people from different backgrounds: black, white, whatever – it doesn’t matter.”Rüdiger is the youngest of six siblings. Only he and one of his sisters were born in Germany. The rest escaped Sierra Leone soon after civil war broke out in 1991 and the Revolutionary United Front attempted to overthrow the government. The conflict lasted 11 years and displaced about 2.5 million people – approximately half the population. Villages were destroyed and relatives scattered across different countries.When Rüdiger was older, he asked his parents – his German father, Matthias, and Sierra Leonean mother, Lily – about their journey and how Sierra Leone compared with Germany. “It was for them simple to come here for us young ones to have a better life,” he says.“You have the utmost respect for them. It’s not easy to leave somewhere behind and start somewhere new. Especially as it’s not that people are seeking refuge because they want to – no, because they have to. They have no other choice. Because this happened to my family I can understand those people and feel with them. It’s important that they be listened to.”Rüdiger believes negative stereotypes about refugees are unfair. “In everything we have good and bad,” he says. “It goes hand in hand, unfortunately. But this is life. Some people had terrible experiences with refugees. We have to be honest as well, there are good ones coming here who really want to turn over their lives.”He calls for perspective and understanding. “If someone commits a crime, if the person is black, for example, does that mean every black person is a criminal? No, you have to deal with that specific person … people have to think a bit more.”Everything Rüdiger and his family have been through has shaped a compassionate outlook. In 2022, he set up the Antonio Rüdiger Foundation, raising funds for primary and secondary schools in Sierra Leone to invest in education, wellness and sport. He has, he says, “a lot of energy to help those who are in need”.Rüdiger heads to his third World Cup after Madrid failed to win a major trophy for a second successive season. Reports in Spain paint a picture of a troubled institution, and José Mourinho is due to return to the club where he won La Liga 14 years ago. “These things can happen that you go two years without winning a trophy,” Rüdiger says. “Of course, there’s a lot of noise and everything. There’s a lot of things … I wouldn’t say more important … but this is football, it can happen. You just need to do the right measures and be honest with yourself, make the right conclusions and go for another year. Very simple.” He adds: “What do you want us to do? At the end of the day we should cry still over the last seasons? No. Find the right conclusions and move forward, because what is lost now you cannot win back.”Rüdiger has little time to dwell on disappointment with Germany’s opening World Cup game, against Curaçao, approaching. Germany are four-time World Cup winners, second only to Brazil. But since lifting the trophy in 2014, they have not made it past the group stage and they have not progressed beyond the European Championship quarter-finals since 2016.“As a huge country like Germany with huge football history, you don’t go to the World Cup just to say: ‘Hi, we are here,’” Rüdiger says. “You try to do the best you can. Of course, there are teams these days who are ahead of us. But it’s not bad sometimes maybe to be in the underdog position.”Which is, of course, something Rüdiger knows all about. Making it from that small pitch in Neukölln to the World Cup and winning trophies at Chelsea and Real Madrid is a great underdog story.“If I came from this situation and I came out of it,” he says, “anyone can do it.”To find out more about UNHCR’s Gamechanging Team visit unrefugees.org.uk/gamechangers

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Germany’s fans have been trying to improve the atmosphere at games of late. Photograph: Alex Grimm/Getty ImagesJulian Nagelsmann will rely on a Bayern-based core, but individual class is in worryingly short supplyThis article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.Predicting Germany’s tactics is not entirely straightforward because Julian Nagelsmann likes to change his lineup and system. The result was five mediocre to poor performances in the qualifiers, including a 2-0 defeat in Slovakia that could easily have been heavier. But they were convincing in the return fixture, sweeping their opponents aside 6-0, and won their group convincingly.Nagelsmann will probably base his team from that match in Leipzig and will demand passion from his players. “We have to play with emotion,” says Nagelsmann, who is regarded as a tactical obsessive and is often seen shouting and raging in the technical area.The team’s traditional recipe for success has been to adopt the things that work well at Bayern Munich and in 1974 and 2014 that led to World Cup triumphs. The chances of a repeat initially appear favourable: this season has gone exceptionally well for Germany’s only world-class club. Nagelsmann is therefore likely to rely on a Bayern core of Jonathan Tah, Aleksandar Pavlovic, Joshua Kimmich, Leon Goretzka, Jamal Musiala and the impact substitute Lennart Karl (with Serge Gnabry out through injury) as well as Manuel Neuer, who ended his international retirement in May to play in his fifth World Cup.But can the Munich axis be relied upon? Musiala is out of form and in recent months was not much more influential for Bayern than Goretzka, who sat on the bench in all the important matches in the second half of the season yet still seems certain to start under Nagelsmann. And Kimmich will play in a different position for Germany than he does for Bayern: at right-back rather than in central midfield. It is a solution with risks.Kimmich embodies a problem in German football: there is a lack of individual class. He is certainly a master of the traditional virtues, but as captain, because of his shortcomings in tackles and one-on-ones, he does not measure up to predecessors such as Lothar Matthäus, Michael Ballack or Philipp Lahm. Germany also used to pride themselves on their goalkeepers and defenders. That, too, is lacking, despite the return of the 40-year-old Neuer. Nor are there any midfield strategists in the mould of Toni Kroos or Mesut Özil.The hope lies up front. In the No 10 role, Nagelsmann has a wide range of options in Florian Wirtz, Musiala, Kai Havertz and Karl, all of whom possess outstanding skills. He will probably use Havertz as a deep-lying centre-forward as there was never any doubt about the Arsenal forward’s technical ability, only about his efficiency. Will he be more clinical than he was at Euro 2024? He will need to be because, with Niclas Füllkrug and Nick Woltemade still not established, this is a team without a classic goalscorer.Florian Wirtz combines the qualities of a playmaker with those of a tireless team player in a way that is exceedingly rare. “He is extremely hard-working and not a classic No 10 who only wants the ball, but someone who also puts in a lot of work,” said Nagelsmann, who defended Wirtz when he came in for criticism in the months after he moved to England. Wirtz did not have a terrible season at Liverpool, but measured against his class and his transfer fee it has not been a particularly good one. The same applies, to some extent, to the national team. Against non-elite opponents, as in the 4-3 win in Switzerland in March, Wirtz can blow everyone away with his technique and interplay with Havertz or Karl. But if Germany are to be successful the 23-year-old will have to perform against major sides.At the age of 10, Lennart Karl had a trial at the Bernabéu, but decided to stay in Germany. When he said in January that Real Madrid was his dream club and he definitely wanted to play for them one day, some Bayern fans took offence. Yet it is probably this mixture of self-confidence and carefree ease that defines the 18-year-old. A year ago, he was playing for Bayern’s under-19s; now his dribbling is feared everywhere. He made his international debut in March. “He is calmer than I expected,” said Nagelsmann. “I had absolutely no sense the hype had gone to his head.”Nico Schlotterbeck and Antonio Rüdiger attract more attention, but Germany’s best defender is Jonathan Tah. His strength in the tackle and his composure on the ball will be crucial. Tah is not a man of many words and comes across as quiet off the pitch. On it, however, he seems to have found his role, and in the United States he will play his first World Cup match at the age of 30. “It was never pleasant playing against me, because I have a certain physicality,” he told Zeit two years ago. “But now I’m even more unpleasant, because I always keep my opponent in view and stay right on him.”“Olé, super Deutschland, olé!” “Deutschlaand, Deutschlaaand, Deutschlaaaand!” German terrace chants cannot quite keep up with the creativity of Musiala’s or Karl’s dribbling and during the home Euros two years agoNagelsmann complained that Germany’s fans were too quiet. Being typically German, the DFB set up a working group in 2024 to improve the atmosphere: the AG Stimmung. “People want to sing, they just need someone to tell them what to sing,” said lead chanter Bengt Kunkel. However, Kunkel will not be travelling to the United States. He feels the same as many fans, for whom this World Cup is simply too big and too expensive. Even so, there will probably be a few more supporters in the US, Mexico and Canada than there were in Qatar.Much like German football, it has seen better days. At the end of April, Friedrich Merz criticised Donald Trump in front of school pupils, saying he had gone to war with Iran without any strategy whatsoever. Trump’s response was that Merz had no idea what he was talking about and was doing a terrible job. That it may not always be wise to say every thought out loud is something the chancellor and the national coach still have to learn, the latter having had to row back on several occasions in his career. No one should expect any sign of rebellion from the DFB in the United States. There was some discussion in Germany about boycotting the World Cup because of the Greenland crisis, but only briefly. The DFB still seems traumatised by the One Love armband affair at the World Cup in Qatar. “I’m no longer taking part in the political discussion,” said the captain, Joshua Kimmich. “We’ve seen that it’s not really productive when we players speak out politically.”Written by Nico Horn and Oliver Fritsch for Die Zeit.