Felix Keidel: Jürgen Klopp's Bold Choice for Germany's National Team
Jürgen Klopp promised a reset. Not a gentle transition, not a cautious evolution – a hard break with the recent past of German football. When he sat down for his first press conference as Germany head coach a few weeks ago, he made it brutally simple: almost nobody was safe.
Performance. Form. Work rate. Those would decide who pulled on the shirt.
Behind the scenes, Klopp and his staff drew up a long list – 57 names for his first squad. He refused to go public with it, but the message seeped out quickly enough: reputations would not protect anyone, and doors would open for players the DFB had never previously called.
After three failed World Cup campaigns, Germany needed more than cosmetic change. It needed new faces, new energy, new ideas.
One of those new faces, astonishingly, looks set to be Felix Keidel.
From 3. Liga to the national team
Late on Tuesday, Bild broke the story: the 23-year-old SV Elversberg player had received an invitation from Klopp. A day later, kicker confirmed it with its own information. No one tried to dress it up – this is a shock nomination.
Keidel has played just three times in the Bundesliga. He has barely dipped his toes into top-flight football. On paper, this is not the kind of profile that usually lands in a Germany squad.
Yet his path explains why Klopp is intrigued.
Keidel’s story begins at FC Ingolstadt. He joined the U19s in 2012 and quietly climbed every rung of the academy ladder. By summer 2022, he had made the jump to the professional squad. Within a year, he had become a regular in the 3. Liga at just 20, racking up 37 appearances, scoring once and adding four assists.
Nothing glamorous. Just steady, reliable, upward progress.
In 2025 came the first big leap. Elversberg, still stung after narrowly missing out on promotion against 1. FC Heidenheim, saw something in him and paid a modest €400,000 to prise him away from Ingolstadt. It looked like a small, calculated gamble.
It paid off quickly.
Keidel settled almost immediately in Saarland. He became a fixture in Vincent Wagner’s side, playing 25 games, starting 13 of them, and driving SVE’s improbable promotion push. When Elversberg finally celebrated a sensational rise to the Bundesliga, Keidel was right in the middle of it.
From Germany’s third tier to the top division in just over two years – a rapid climb that rarely goes unnoticed by a coach like Klopp.
This season, Keidel has had his first taste of life at the very top. Three Bundesliga appearances against Leverkusen, Gladbach and Bayern, capped with a goal. One DFB-Pokal outing against MSV Duisburg, where he laid on two assists. That brief but impactful sample seems to have been enough to convince Klopp to bring him into the national team setup.
It is a bold call. It is also entirely in character for a coach who thrives on backing hungry, upwardly mobile players.
A Swiss army knife with a right-back’s instincts
The raw numbers do not tell the full story. What really draws Klopp’s eye is Keidel’s versatility.
At Ingolstadt, he became the coach’s tactical multi-tool. Under Sabrina Wittmann, his biggest supporter there, Keidel lined up almost everywhere. Both full-back positions. His natural slot at right-back in a back four. Central midfield. Even as an attacking midfielder, drifting into the half-spaces and acting as a playmaker.
Few players in the 3. Liga covered as many roles with such consistency.
The move to Elversberg nudged him slightly deeper. In the promotion season he operated mainly at right-back, a position that increasingly looks like his long-term home. This year, Wagner has often dropped him into defensive midfield alongside Lukasz Poreba, trusting his reading of the game and his work rate in front of the back four.
For Klopp, though, the picture is clearer. Germany’s new coach is not short of central midfielders. He is short of right-backs.
Germany’s long-standing problem on the right
Ever since Philipp Lahm retired and Joshua Kimmich moved into midfield, the right side of Germany’s defence has been an open question. Hansi Flick and Julian Nagelsmann both wrestled with it. Both left without a definitive answer.
The experiments were endless. Benjamin Henrichs and Ridle Baku at RB Leipzig. Josha Vagnoman at Stuttgart. Even Kimmich, dragged back to right-back at the 2026 World Cup in a bid to plug the gap. None of those trials ever truly stuck. Most were abandoned almost as quickly as they began.
The result: for years, Germany have lacked a high-quality, long-term solution at right-back in a back four. The position has felt like a rotating audition rather than a cornerstone of the team.
This is where Keidel enters the conversation.
He is not a superstar. He is not a marketing face. He is a 23-year-old who has fought his way up from the 3. Liga, learned multiple roles, and adapted to every step up in level without blinking.
Klopp is betting that those traits can translate onto the international stage, and that Keidel’s blend of defensive awareness, running power and tactical flexibility can finally stabilise a problem area that has haunted Germany for a decade.
Perhaps it is too early. Perhaps the jump from Elversberg to the DFB team will expose his limits.
Or perhaps, of all people, it will be Felix Keidel who finally nails down the right-back spot Germany have been searching for since Lahm walked away.
