Bayern Munich’s Jamal Musiala delighted to be named Germany footballer of the year for 2022

Bayern Munich’s Jamal Musiala was recently named Germany’s footballer of the year for the calendar year of 2022 after his success for both Die Roten and the German national team. Technically, though, the award only pertains to his exploits for Die Mannschaft. He received an overwhelming majority of the votes from the DFB’s fan club, getting over 60% of the votes ahead of Chelsea’s Kai Havertz and fellow Bayern compatriot Joshua Kimmich.

Obviously, with Germany’s failure to progress from the World Cup group stages in Qatar, 2022 is yet another year next to an asterisk next to it for German football fans. But Musiala was, without a doubt, one of the bright spots for the national team throughout the year. At only 19 years of age, he’s already earned 20 caps for the national team and will surely have plenty more to enjoy as his career continues to progress for both club and country.

Between the World Cup, qualifiers, and international friendlies, 11 of Musiala’s 20 appearances for Germany came in 2022, and his goals and assists tally from the year perhaps don’t do his performances true justice. From those 11 matches, he only tallied 2 assists, one of which came in the World Cup draw against Spain, but he was still one of Germany’s most consistent performers under Hansi Flick in 2022.

On receiving the honor, Musiala said he views the award as incentive to work even harder to churn out positive performances and grow as a player. “It’s a huge honor for me. I’m really happy about this award, which I didn’t expect. I would like to thank everyone who voted for me. But this title is also an incentive to keep working on myself, to get even better and hopefully to be successful again with the national team. That’s my big goal,” he said (via @iMiaSanMia).

Musiala also said he would’ve traded the personal accolade for a better showing from Germany in Qatar — which was the country’s second straight group stage elimination after their 2018 crashing out in Russia Even Flick had spoken about how he truly felt that Musiala personally deserved to progress out of the group stages in Qatar and deserved to play more World Cup matches at the tournament for how well he had shone for himself.

“A personal award is nice. But I would have preferred to go through with the national team at the World Cup,” Musiala stressed.