Veteran Witthaus looks for World Cup hat-trick

Germany moved a step closer to becoming the first team to lift three successive World Cups after they took their place in the semi-finals on Tuesday. Individually, though, there’s only one man in their young, largely inexperienced squad who has a chance of completing a hat-trick of gold medals.
At 27, Matthias Witthaus is the veteran in the side. One of the youngest players to make an international debut, the striker has 312 caps to his credit in 11 years, and there is not one title worth winning that he hasn’t got. But he says it is the first-place finish in this tournament that he is really looking forward to.

“I have already won two and it will be great to win a third World Cup. With a young team like ours, you could say a second, third-place finish would be decent. But I play to win. I’ll settle for nothing less than the top spot,” Matthias told The Indian Express after helping the team qualify for the last four.

Germany started their campaign in an unconvincing fashion, drawing the first game against Korea and barely managing to beat Argentina. Matthias looks at the performance differently and says the team has been shaping up well going into the semi-final. “I think the team has started to gather momentum. The match against South Korea was a draw. They are a tough team to play against, but we’ve bounced back. We played good matches against Canada and The Netherlands. The team is peaking at the right time.”

Germany’s show is commendable given that they are missing some key players, who have either called it quits or pulled out due to higher studies. “Ours is a young team. Only three players — Moritz Fürste, Jan-Marco Montag and I — have played in a World Cup before. We came here without some top players like Christopher Zeller, Florian Keller and Tibor Weissenborn, who have moved on with their lives. You do miss players of their calibre and experience. But the youngsters have shown great heart. Some players are really talented. Florian Fuchs, for example, he has scored four goals so far, which is incredible. So youngsters are doing a good job.”

Meanwhile, like some of his former team mates, Matthias has also started planning for life after hockey; just that in his case, it may still revolve around the sport. “Why am I still playing hockey? Because it’s fun. I’m planning to stay till the 2012 Olympics. Then I’ll retire. When you grow old, you want to retire. But hopefully I’ll not be away from the sport. I’m studying sports at university and would like to go into sports management.”