"What I currently see from us, how we train together, support each other, how much we do together off the pitch – I would say that is the best team energy since I became a national player," Nico Schlotterbeck said, summing up the mood inside Germany's camp hours before their 2026 World Cup opener.
He did not offer platitudes. He pointed to a concrete run of results and belief: "We know how good we are, we've achieved nine wins in a row." Schlotterbeck followed that with a sharper projection of how the mood might matter on the field: "Hopefully, this [energy] will translate onto the pitch, because it will motivate everyone to go the extra mile to support their teammates."
Schlotterbeck is here preparing for his second World Cup, and he framed the current build-up as different from the last tournament. He said Germany are significantly stronger than at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and that the players do more together outside training as part of what he sees as a deeper unity.
The line between locker-room feeling and match performance is the core question for this team. Schlotterbeck tried to narrow the gap himself with a short timeline: "I think the initial apprehension will disappear after the first two or three games because we will hopefully play so well that the fans will say, 'This is the team we want to win something with'." In other words: the first matches are the test, and the squad expects to answer it by winning and by playing well.
That confidence sits next to memory. Schlotterbeck did not gloss over the sting of 2022. "On the one hand, I would of course prefer to undo that experience. But on the other hand, it was very important for my career because it helped me mature as a character," he said, linking the disappointment of a group-stage exit to the sharper, more focused player he says he has become.
He also reached back to a childhood moment to explain why the World Cup still carries weight for him. Schlotterbeck recalled watching Oliver Neuville's goal against Poland at the 2006 World Cup as his first encounter with the tournament: "I had to shake his hand after the game, because his goal against Poland [at the 2006 World Cup] was kind of my first encounter with a World Cup." He added, "In that moment, I felt like that little boy again, cheering in front of the TV." He said he met Neuville "last year or the year before" when Neuville was assistant coach at Borussia Mönchengladbach.
Schlotterbeck's endorsement of the team's chemistry is not solitary. Jonathan Tah, Schlotterbeck's defensive partner, spoke of his own arrival at the first World Cup with energy: "A World Cup is something special and I'm so excited to be at the first," Tah said, adding, "I felt how big this tournament is and I'm very grateful to be here. It means a lot." Tah also praised a team-mate's development: "Jonah [Tah] has made a huge jump [in development terms] in the last three, four years."
The friction is plain: strong training-ground chemistry and a winning pre-tournament streak are persuasive, but the memory of Qatar's early exit is recent and formative. Schlotterbeck has set expectations and placed the burden squarely on the opening fixtures — "the first two or three games" — to convert camaraderie into results. If those matches produce the kind of football and victories he described, Germany's claim to be a team with the best energy since he joined the national side will look like more than talk; if they do not, the 2022 lesson will be the standard by which this squad is judged.
