Matthias Ginter's Bitterest Time: Europa League Loss and World Cup Snub
Matthias Ginter still remembers the exact dates.
20th and 21st May 2026.
Two days that tore a hole in what should have been the crowning season of his career.
On the Thursday night, he walked off the pitch in Dublin having given everything for SC Freiburg, only to watch Aston Villa lift the Europa League trophy. A final lost, a dream denied. Twelve hours later, the second punch landed: Julian Nagelsmann’s World Cup squad was announced, and Ginter’s name was not on it.
“It was the bitterest time in my career. A double blow at the end of an actually very special season,” he told Kicker.
No exaggeration there. At 32, Ginter had been the backbone of Freiburg’s remarkable run, a constant presence and a key figure in a campaign that had pushed the club deep into Europe and kept them competitive on all fronts. Inside the club, he was a leader. Outside it, he was supposed to be a certainty.
Germany’s coach thought otherwise.
Nagelsmann cut him from the final World Cup squad, a sporting decision that hurt, but, for Ginter, the way it unfolded cut even deeper. The defender did not hide his disappointment at the communication – or lack of it – from the national team setup and hinted at a longer-running tension.
“I don’t want to talk about the way it generally went down for three years (with Nagelsmann),” he said, choosing his words carefully but pointedly. “There were published leaks, but I was only informed of the decision on Thursday, the day of the nomination.”
By then, the narrative around the squad was already swirling in public. Ginter, meanwhile, was still processing a European final defeat.
This is a player who knows both sides of a World Cup story. In 2014 he became a world champion in Brazil without playing a single minute. A winner’s medal, but not a single touch on the pitch. Back then, the experience was surreal, almost distant. This time, the absence hit harder.
He admitted he did not grasp immediately what missing out would mean. The full weight only arrived when the tournament kicked off. “It was only with the opening match of the World Cup that I became really aware of it,” he said. As the anthem played and the cameras swept across the Germany squad, Ginter was watching from home, not from the bench or the tunnel.
And the Europa League final? That pain came flooding back as part of the same emotional package. “Because it was a package, the disappointment of losing the Europa League final came back again,” he explained.
One season, two days, and a pair of blows that turned what should have been a legacy-defining year into a test of resilience for one of Germany’s most experienced defenders.
