There are a number of German players in Europe’s top leagues. In the first half of the season, Nick Woltemade in particular attracted attention with an impressive goal-scoring rate. But lesser-known names also racked up playing time in England, Italy, Spain, and France.
Premier League
In the summer of 2025, two Germans attracted attention with their multi-million dollar transfers to the Premier League. However, Florian Wirtz and Nick Woltemade experienced completely different first half-years on the island: Woltemade is Newcastle’s top scorer with seven goals from his first 14 Premier League games. Wirtz, on the other hand, has not scored a single goal for Liverpool in more than a thousand minutes of play and only managed his first scoring point in the league shortly before Christmas.
Perhaps somewhat under the radar in Germany, but all the more frequent on the pitch in the Premier League were Kevin Schade and Bernd Leno. The Brentford international and the Fulham goalkeeper have by far the most German minutes played (Schade: 1323 minutes/Leno: 1440 minutes) in the world’s best league, while Merlin Röhl and Kai Havertz have been plagued by injuries. Also notably good: Malick Thiaw, who followed Woltemade to Newcastle in the summer, recorded a strong tackle rate of 70.6 percent, even if he did make an unfortunate mistake recently.
Serie A
The top German player in Serie A in terms of minutes played is a bit of a surprise: Idrissa Touré played a total of 1,171 minutes in 14 games for newly promoted Pisa. Before moving to Italy (initially to Juventus U23), the 27-year-old played for the RB Leipzig youth academy and then for the reserve teams of Schalke and Bremen, among others. He is well ahead of Suat Serdar (773 minutes, Hellas Verona) and Robin Gosens (723 minutes), who is having a horror season with bottom-of-the-table AC Florence, but at least went into the holidays with his first win of the season.
In addition, a German defender with offensive qualities attracted attention:
Marc Oliver Kempf, who moved from Hertha BSC to Como 1907 in the summer of 2024, scored two goals in 13 games for the northern Italian club. This makes him the fourth-best scorer in the team coached by Cesc Fabregas.
La Liga
In La Liga, there was only one German professional who played every minute of the first half of the season. And it wasn’t Antonio Rüdiger of Real Madrid, who missed more than two months due to a thigh injury. Jeremy Toljan, on the other hand, started in all 16 league games for UD Levante, but his club is at the bottom of the Spanish top flight with only ten points.
In addition to Rüdiger and Toljan, former Darmstadt player Clemens Riedel is also active in La Liga. The 22-year-old center back moved to Espanyol Barcelona in the summer for €2 million – he has played seven games and recorded a respectable tackle rate of 62.2 percent.
Ligue 1
Kevin Trapp returned to Paris at the end of the summer transfer window, but on his second stint in France, he is not playing for serial champions PSG, but for city rivals Paris FC. The 35-year-old, who came in as a challenger, has been alternating in goal for the capital club with young keeper Obed Nkambadio and has made five appearances in Ligue 1.
Thilo Kehrer enjoyed significantly more appearances (eleven) in the starting lineup at AS Monaco. However, the center back ruined his chances of even more playing time by receiving a red card and a yellow-red card, which resulted in a two-game suspension. Nevertheless, his tackle success rate of 68.4 percent is impressive. The professional career of DFB jewel Paris Brunner is still struggling to gain momentum, with hardly any playing time in Monaco.