Three international matches, one goal: Manuel Friedrich is the most successful newcomer to the German national team following the 2006 World Cup. The 27-year-old earned his first cap in the second half of the friendly match against Sweden (3-0) in Gelsenkirchen at the start of the season. The defender from Mainz then twice played the full 90 minutes in the 2008 UEFA European Championship qualifiers against Ireland (1-0) and San Marino (13-0). In these matches Manuel Friedrich proved that he is not just a substitute for Christoph Metzelder, Per Mertesacker, Robert Huth and Jens Nowotny in defence. The quartet of inside defenders that played at the 2006 World Cup was missing because of injuries. “Manuel did very well”, was how national coach Joachim Loew praised the man who is the only international so far from 1. FSV Mainz 05.

Manuel Friedrich scored with a fantastic 87th minute header to make it 12-0 when the Germans defeated San Marino 13-0 at Serravalle, so recording their second-highest victory in the 98-year-old international history of the German Football Association, DFB. The man whose hobby is golf did not have much to do in defence. Together with his namesake, Arne Friedrich from Berlin, he had “battened down the hatches” against the harmless amateurs from San Marino. This task had proved much more difficult during the victory against the Irish in Stuttgart four days before. Manuel Friedrich paid dearly for his first travelling experience with the DFB team, however. He suffered a meniscus injury against San Marino that required immediate surgery after his return. As a consequence, the joint captain missed some matches with Mainz o5.

There are now numerous arguments as to why Friedrich could become a regular player with the national team until the 2008 UEFA European Championship. “He is tall, fast, strong with his head and an intelligent player. And he solves problems without rough fouls. His strong points are tackling and excellent positional play”, Mainz’s coach Juergen Klopp said of his model player. Friedrich has made a giant step forward in his career since returning from Werder Bremen to Mainz in January 2004.

He had moved to Bremen in 2002. But his stay with SV Werder was a disaster. Three-and-a-half years ago he suffered two torn crucial ligaments within a short period. He played briefly in just one Bundesliga match in Bremen (along with 13 third-division matches). Werder Bremen, who had paid a transfer fee of 2.5 million Euros for him, let Friedrich return to Mainz, at his own request, 2½ years ago. Since then “Manu“, who could also be called “Mr. Reliable”, has played in all point matches except one for FSV. He is rarely shown a Yellow Card. In his youth he was trained in many sports (volleyball, gymnastics, table tennis, athletics), but his dream was to live in the USA as a golf pro. This extravagant wish somehow does not fit with Friedrich, who is a modest, matter-of-fact person without any pretensions.

Friedrich was already a member of the national squad last March, before the international match against the USA (4-1), but did not play. In May he was very frustrated when it was announced that “Oldie” Jens Nowotny had been given the last defending place in the World Cup squad. Apart from the quarter-final against Argentina, Friedrich watched all German World Cup matches as a spectator from the stands. Klopp, his mentor, could not understand why Friedrich was not in the DFB squad despite having the best tackling techniques of all Bundesliga defenders. The coach did not comprehend how these values shown by a model athlete were termed “miserable” in the performance tests of the DFB team in March. “Measuring errors”, Klopp guessed. The test results were one of the reasons why Nowotny was preferred to Friedrich.

The reason for the abnormally poor results was only discovered in the summer: Friedrich’s tests were affected by a bout of glandular fever, discovered in the early stages, which ruled out his World Cup participation. He himself did not see this as the main reason: “There certainly were other arguments as well”. Against Ireland he was irreplaceable so had to play on. After the halftime break, during which he had been treated for an ankle joint injury sustained shortly before, he had signalled to Loew that he had to be replaced. “I said to Manuel, you simply have to play on, you have to fight through”, Loew later disclosed.  After that Friedrich played through his second international match as if he had been in the team for a few years. It would not be a surprise if Manuel Friedrich were to continue in a vital role to smooth the road for the German team’s journey to the 2008 UEFA European Championship.