Nick Woltemade suffers another bitter setback – but Jürgen Klopp offers him encouragement

Although he was recently voted player of the month at Juventus, Nick Woltemade has not been called up by Jürgen Klopp for the upcoming Nations League matches. There are reasons for that, but it may not be the final word.

"For heaven's sake, we'd be crazy to close any doors," Klopp said when asked about the high-profile players he had left out of his squad this time. Woltemade was among them, alongside Yann Aurel Bisseck and Karim Adeyemi.

Klopp said he had spoken at length to the centre-forward, who has repeatedly come under fire in the Italian press. Woltemade has yet to score in the league since joining the Old Lady on loan from Newcastle, though he has three goals and an assist in the Europa League. Klopp highlighted those contributions and offered Woltemade encouragement for the future.

"Nick is actually going through a good spell at Juve right now, to be honest. A lot is coming back. He hasn't had an easy time since the move. And things aren't going smoothly at Juve either: fundamentally, it was a very smart move: a different league, better weather," Klopp said. The fact that Italy's once-dominant serial champions are struggling to find their feet is "of course not down to Nick. Not even remotely," Klopp stressed.

Klopp explained his decision to leave out the 24-year-old: "It depends on how the team perform and what the expectations are. (…) Nick is on the right track. He's lacking a little in outright goal threat. His ability to develop and sustain play is there. And so, of course, no door is closed. It was a difficult decision for us, but sometimes form outweighs everything else."

In Woltemade's place, Niclas Füllkrug returned to the national-team fold after more than a year away. It was a logical development and a "relatively easy decision", Klopp made clear, given Füllkrug's impressive scoring rate at Werder Bremen.

The other two forwards in the trio are Younes Ebnoutalib, who has also been scoring regularly for Eintracht Frankfurt (eight goals in ten games), and Kai Havertz, whose recent winner for Arsenal against Liverpool made him the highest-scoring German player in Premier League history.

Since his debut in summer 2025, Woltemade has received an invitation to every Germany training camp. With Havertz injured, he carried the DFB team's attack in the closing stages of their difficult World Cup qualifying campaign, scoring four goals in the final three games.

Woltemade then featured only in the disastrous World Cup round-of-32 exit against Paraguay and missed a penalty in the shootout, with costly consequences. After Klopp took over as national-team coach, Woltemade was part of the XXL squad and got a chance to play in the last two games against Serbia and Greece. Against Serbia, he squandered a clear-cut scoring chance five metres from an unguarded goal.