The Nmecha brothers: Why they both left Man City, choosing Germany over England and the impact of Kompany
Stuart James Jan 4, 2022 4
“It’s crazy,” Felix Nmecha says, shaking his head. “A lot of parents do this sort of stuff and their kids don’t make it – so we thank God that we did.”
Felix and Lukas Nmecha have been talking at Wolfsburg’s training ground for the best part of an hour, covering everything from Stefan Kuntz’s love of scrambled eggs to Pep Guardiola’s lessons in the art of movement, when the conversation turns to the No 43 bus and the sacrifices that their mother and father made to enable them to be part of Manchester City’s academy – a relationship that lasted more than a decade.
“It wasn’t easy getting to training,” Lukas says. “When you’re about 12, you have training three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – and it’s always at night time, around 7pm. At that time my dad used to have to do night shifts – he worked for (security company) G4S.
“So we used to have to get the Piccadilly bus and then get off and walk to the training ground, in the dark, past this park. It was maybe a 20-minute walk.
“The bad part was when we came back, at 9pm, the bus from Piccadilly going back towards the airport was always packed. Sometimes it would just drive by (as it was full). It would be freezing and it was me, my brother, my mum, and my sister in the pram. We were doing that all the time.”
Lukas pauses for a moment to reflect. “For my parents now, it’s nice that we made it in a way.”
The reason the Nmecha brothers are recalling that journey is because it’s one of the first things that comes to mind for the two of them when they are asked about October’s landmark game against Union Berlin, when Lukas was playing up front for Wolfsburg and Felix appeared as a late substitute.
Having both swapped Manchester City for Wolfsburg in the summer, that Union Berlin game was the first time the Nmechas had played alongside one another at senior level and, understandably, it was a proud moment for the family after all the hard work that had gone on behind the scenes over the years.
Lukas, who at 23 is two years older than Felix, felt particularly pleased for his brother. “I just liked seeing him come on,” he says. “I know he’s had injuries (Felix was out for nine months at City with tendonitis in the knee), so to see him on the pitch was nice.
“I think slowly he’s starting to show everybody here how good he is. If he can reach his peak, and I can reach mine, that (playing together for Wolfsburg) will happen more often whilst we’re here. And, depending on what he chooses with his nationality, hopefully at international level too.”
Born in Hamburg but raised in Manchester, Lukas and Felix have represented both Germany and England. Lukas switched allegiances permanently in 2019, when he declared for Germany, and he has never looked back. He helped win the European Under-21 Championship last summer, when he also finished as the top goalscorer in the tournament, and made his full debut for Germany in November after an impressive start to the season with Wolfsburg.
His City career never really got going.
Lukas was limited to only three substitute appearances, two in the Premier League and one in the Carabao Cup in December 2017, when he made his debut against Leicester City. Guardiola’s team triumphed on penalties that night and Lukas, aged 19, surprised a few by stepping forward to take one. “I was the penalty taker for a lot of the age groups that I played in at City, so when the manager said, ‘Who’s taking a pen?’ I put my hand up straight away,” he recalls, smiling. “Everyone sort of looked at me in a strange way!”
He converted from the spot but that was the first and the last goal he scored for City’s first team.
By his own admission, the loan spells that followed at Preston North End, Wolfsburg and Middlesbrough were difficult and it was not until he spent last season with Belgium’s Anderlecht, under the management of Manchester City royalty Vincent Kompany, that everything fell into place. Lukas scored 18 times for the Brussels side and then followed that up by winning the golden boot for Germany Under-21s in June. He was full of confidence, but also knew returning to City was a non-starter.
“After the European Championship, I spoke to Txiki (Begiristain, City’s director of football) – I think we were on the same page,” Lukas explains. “I’d had two what I’d say were unsuccessful loans – on paper, they were unsuccessful but I learned a lot during those times – and I’d had a really good season at Anderlecht, and I think they (City) thought I was on a bit of a hype train and that they would be able to get some money. I was also told that they were going to sign a striker.
“It wasn’t that I disliked the club but I didn’t really feel part of the club anymore. There had been three years where I’d been away from the club anyway. When I came back I’d have either internationals, or in the case of Anderlecht, they started the season early and the same in Championship (with Preston), so I never really had a lot of time with the team. I had a pre-season in Asia and a pre-season in America, where I played well, but I just had that feeling where I had that stigma of being an academy player.
“There are always exceptions, like Phil Foden. But when you are at such a big club and you buy a player that has cost £50 million, if you are a player from the academy who they’ve not invested so much money in, they’ve got to explain why they’ve paid that £50 million for that player, so there’s no chance in a sense, unless you are a lot better than the other guys, which I wasn’t. So I just felt that I had to leave.”
Although Lukas had been frustrated during his six-month loan spell with Wolfsburg for the first half of 2019-20, that was largely down to the coach at the time and the lack of opportunities. His relationship with Marcel Schafer, Wolfsburg’s sporting director, remained close, and Lukas did not need to think twice about returning to the Bundesliga club permanently in the summer, after City accepted a €13 million bid.
Felix joined Wolfsburg on a free transfer five days later, with both brothers keen to stress they were totally separate deals. In fact, the two are not even living under the same roof in the northern German city midway between Berlin and Hamburg – they’re next door to one another.
“He’s my brother and I do like him, but I think it’s good to have a bit of space sometimes as well,” Lukas says, smiling.
Felix, left, and elder brother Lukas (Photo: Lukas Nmecha)
Felix’s contract at City expired in the summer. The midfielder only featured twice for City last season, as an 85th-minute substitute in a 3-0 Champions League home win over Olympiakos and replacing Kevin De Bruyne for the second half of an FA Cup defeat of Birmingham City by the same score — although he admits even that was more than he expected, bearing in mind it was clear to all parties he was going to move on. His only other appearance for the club was as a sub in the second leg of a Carabao Cup semi-final against third division Burton Albion in January 2019, after City had won the first leg 9-0.
Not that there is any regret on his part.
Felix looks back on his City years with a lot of fondness – he put together a video that he posted on Instagram when he left – and was grateful to have the opportunity to train with the first team every day during that final season and to be coached by Guardiola. “Tactically, he was just so good in terms of showing us how to move and which spaces open up,” Felix adds.
A question about the thinking behind his decision to sign for Wolfsburg opens up a whole new conversation.
“After my contract finished at City there were two teams that were really interested, and Wolfsburg were obviously one of them,” he says. “How it happened was basically that I prayed to God for a sign that I should go to whichever team. And then he gave me the sign and that’s why I’m here.”
Asked whether he would be comfortable talking more about his faith, Felix replies, “I’m definitely very comfortable talking about it. I don’t see myself as a religious person. I see it as I have a relationship with God. I feel like God has revealed the truth to me and I just try to share it with people.
“It’s just like if someone had a cure for COVID-19, they would want to share it. So, in that same sense, I believe in Jesus and what he did for us on the cross, so that we can be saved, so that we can go to heaven. I just try to share that.”
The answer that Lukas gives to a question about why Anderlecht was so much more enjoyable — and more productive than his previous loan experiences — gives an insight into just how challenging it can be for a hugely talented youngster to adapt to life in the helter-skelter world of the Championship.
“I think (at Anderlecht) it was a little bit of a step back from the Bundesliga and the Championship, where it was just fighting,” Lukas says. “Especially the Championship. It wasn’t something that I grew up with, playing that way. I’m sure it improved me physically and mentally, but I’ve been brought up in the City academy, where it was always about ball possession. I remember my first game for Preston — Swansea away. I’d never received so many long balls before in my life. It was pouring it down with rain, it was a horrible game, and it was like a shock.
“Anderlecht was more of what I’d known: possession football. I think it was the first time since I was in the 23s or 21s, where I had a leader role, I came to a club where I wasn’t just one of the young players. I felt really comfortable and I was happy there, and when that’s the case, you play your best football. Most of all, I had the trust of the manager, and maybe if I didn’t play well in one game I knew that the next game I’d have a chance to go again.”
Lukas’s thoughts on Kompany as a manager are interesting, not least because he knew him previously as a player at City and always valued his advice. “He was a lot more objective than I thought he would be,” Lukas says. “He showed his emotions a lot less than what he did as a player, and there was an understanding that young players have phases and are not always consistent. I think he’s a good manager.”
Although Lukas credits Anderlecht and Kompany for “reviving my career”, senior figures within the Germany national team set-up never lost faith in him during those testing loan spells. Kuntz, the former Germany Under-21 manager, has always been a big fan and it was his visit to Manchester a few years ago that led to Lukas changing his allegiances.
Could England not have done more to keep him? “England have a lot of talent,” Lukas replies. “It wasn’t always easy to get in the England (Under-21) team – I managed it most of the time. But I think through that visit (from Kuntz) and just being born in Germany, I felt more of a connection to the team and to the country. It just felt like the right decision. I can really see a pathway, I’ve already made my debut.”
Kuntz, who left his post with Germany to take over as the Turkey national team manager in September after their poor European Championship, is clearly highly regarded by the Nmechas as a person as well as a coach.
“I don’t know what it is about him,” Lukas says. “He just has a lot of passion and…”
“… a good heart,” interjects Felix.
“Yeah, a good heart,” Lukas adds, nodding. “You feel like he’s an honest person. When I did join and I played the first European Championship, I wasn’t a starter, I was coming on. But there was just something about the teams that he coached and him personally… there are coaches that you can be on the bench for and you still feel a sense of value. I didn’t feel like I wasn’t rated. And when I came the second year, I had his full trust and I managed to perform.”
Maybe the scrambled eggs that Kalu, Lukas and Felix’s father, served Kuntz at the family home in Manchester helped their relationship. “It wasn’t planned for him,” Lukas says, laughing at that story. “My dad was making some and he said, ‘Do you want some?’ Apparently, he loved it!”
The one unknown in all of this still is Felix, who has yet to commit one way or another at international level – although his brother’s remarks earlier in this interview point to him playing for Germany, too. “I have something in my mind. But we’re going to have to wait and see,” Felix says, with a glint in his eye. “I just want what God wants me to do.”
As much as it has been a turbulent and disappointing season for Wolfsburg, who are lying 13th in the 18-team Bundesliga, out of the Champions League after finishing bottom of their group and went into the current winter break on a run of seven successive defeats, the Nmecha brothers can take personal encouragement from their own stories.
Felix has made 10 first-team appearances so far, while the form of Lukas, with eight goals to his name as well as that Germany call-up, has provided a rare bright spot for the club.
It is a testament to their character and upbringing that neither of them comes across as though he’s taking anything for granted now. Felix talks about wanting to become a regular starter for Wolfsburg over the second half of the season, and Lukas admits that being in contention for a place in the Germany squad in a World Cup year is firmly in his mind.
“It doesn’t mean I’ll get called up every time, but I’ve had a smell of it now and I want to keep going, to be in and amongst the names,” he says. “I think definitely the European Championship in Germany (in 2024), that will be something where I will be thinking I’ll be at a good age, hopefully at my peak. That’s the time when I really want to smash it.”
by Bluemoon4610 » Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:15 pm 
