Borussia players in World Cup qualifiers

Up to six Foals could feature in Thursday night’s qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar with their respective national teams.

GERMANY

The Germany national team will begin their qualifying campaign on Thursday night with a home game against Iceland in Duisburg (kick-off 20:45 CET). For this game and the following two qualifiers in Romania and against Northern Macedonia, head coach Joachim Löw had called up three Borussia stars to the squad in Matthias Ginter, Florian Neuhaus and Jonas Hofmann. "I want to play at my best – I managed to do that last year and I want to carry on doing so. I’ve played three games for Germany now and would love to play a few more," said Neuhaus. While he and Ginter hope to feature in Germany’s three imminent qualifiers, Jonas Hofmann is not available anymore after the health authorities issued a quarantine order following a positive PCR test for coronavirus.

SWITZERLAND

Switzerland’s national team, with Yann Sommer, Nico Elvedi, Denis Zakaria and Breel Embolo will start their qualifying campaign for the 2022 World Cup with a Thursday evening game against Bulgaria in Sofia (18:00 CET kick-off). Midfielder Zakaria could make his national team return after 16 months out of international action. Denis made his last Switzerland appearance in November 2019, before the pandemic, in a 6-1 win in Gibraltar. A long-term injury kept him out of action from March 2020. "I feel great and I am happy to be back with the national team. I am ready and I hope we can start our qualifying campaign with some wins," said Zakaria. Switzerland’s second game of the current international phase is on Sunday (20:45 CET) in St. Gallen against Lithuania. Italy and Northern Ireland are the remaining teams in Group C.