Bastian Schweinsteiger found the journey to his 112th Germany cap unusual in many ways. His habit, over the last 11 years, had been to travel north to the German Federation’s meeting point in Frankfurt, sometimes by train from Bavaria. This time, he was crossing borders, going through passport control. It is still a novelty for the midfielder to think of himself as an overseas-based player.
There were compensations for the longer trip home, he joked to reporters ahead of Friday night's Euro 2016 qualifier against Poland. "At least I didn't have Thomas Muller sitting next to me, jabbering on," Schweinsteiger said.
Muller is one of only four Bayern Munich players in the world champions' latest squad, which seems a thin spread, given how heavily the dominant club team in the Bundesliga has influenced the rise of Germany's "Nationalmannschaft" over the last five years.
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Schweinsteiger left Bayern this summer, on an adventure which carried for him a degree of risk and, plainly, a sense of stimulation. He is now a Manchester United footballer, and one still young enough, at just turned 31, to look forward to a two-or-three-year period where he might galvanise the English club back to the sort of pre-eminence in England and Europe they used to enjoy.
Or, in effect make them once again the club who look like the nearest English mirror-image of well-supported, well-resourced, successful Bayern.
But he will have to adapt. He has already noted, in his four games so far for United, the "physical strength" of the English game, and that, unlike the Bundesliga, "the teams at the bottom of the Premier League table can take on and often beat the teams at the top".
His reinvention as a United player will test his stamina, and examine some doubts cast lately about his endurance. Pep Guardiola, the Bayern coach, answering a question recently about why Schweinsteiger, a pillar of that club as boy and man, had been allowed to leave and suggested his best days were behind him.
Yet Guardiola would understand Schweinsteiger’s appetite for something different after a one-club career. When Guardiola himself was in his early 30s, after growing up with and captaining Barcelona, he was invited to consider a switch to Old Trafford. He chose Italy instead.
Schweinsteiger could have done the same, granted himself more time on the ball perhaps, more pause. But part of the attraction was a chance to work with Louis van Gaal, the United manager and a major influence on the Germany captain’s evolution.
It was Van Gaal who six years ago looked at Schweinsteiger, who had emerged young at Bayern and with Germany as a feathery winger, and decided he needed a new role. He was not the best player the club then had at zipping down the flanks – Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben were – so Van Gaal tried him in central midfield.
The position would become second-nature to Schweinsteiger. He would establish himself as one of the sport’s true leaders, imposing authority, his eye for a pass and appetite for a tackle in the middle of the pitch.
Nobody in Manchester greeted the signing of Schweinsteiger as if he was Germany’s answer to Ryan Giggs – as a prodigy in Germany in the early 2000s, he had been more that sort of footballer – but with the hope he might be the nearest answer to what United have missed in the 10 years since Roy Keane left.
He has a big year ahead of him: To show he can tower in English football; to demonstrate that the aches, strains and muscle pulls that have hampered him over the last 12 months are not symptoms of decline, and, in France next summer, to maintain Germany’s status as No 1 in the international hierarchy.
Joachim Low, the Germany coach who named Schweinsteiger as captain last year following the retirement of Philipp Lahm, acknowledges he needs some careful handling, tries not to call him up for too many friendlies, but stresses “we need him for the important matches”.
Friday night counts as one. Poland beat Germany in the reverse fixture, and potentially complicated the automatic qualification route. Schweinsteiger missed that fixture with injury, and wants order restored.
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