Werder professional Manuel Mbom will continue to play for the German U-21 national team. A possible change of association is thus off the table, as his previous national coach Stefan Kuntz has revealed.
When Stefan Kuntz was presented as the new Turkish national coach on Monday, the press conference with Turkish journalists was also followed by an appointment for German reporters. In addition to talking about his departure from the DFB, the 58-year-old also announced that Manuel Mbom would continue to play for the U-21 national team, which had been coached by Kuntz until recently. In a telephone conversation, the SV Werder Bremen professional told him that he had decided to play for Germany.
Recently, doubts had arisen in the player’s mind. Despite his participation in the latest DFB training course, the 21-year-old decided not to play in the two European Championship qualifiers against San Marino and Latvia – in order not to obstruct a possible change of association. Due to his father’s Cameroonian origins, the right to play for the senior national team of the West African country was also considered an option for Mbom.
However, due to a change in FIFA rules, such a change of association would no longer have been permitted after Mbom’s deployment. Since September 2020, according to the regulations “III Eligibility to play for association teams, Article 9 point 2 b”, the following conditions would have to be met: “The player was under 21 years of age at the time of his last appearance in a match in an official competition of any football division for his current association.”
This has no longer been the case for Mbom since 24 February – although he only became aware of this during the training course. After his internal confession, nothing now stands in the way of further appearances in the DFB jersey.
