Christopher Nkunku developed into a top star at RB Leipzig last season. On Thursday afternoon, he spoke about last season and the season ahead – and also made a commitment to RB.
When you see Christopher Nkunku sitting on the podium of the media room in Leipzig’s team hotel in Aigen, he doesn’t seem like someone who is on the verge of becoming a superstar in the football firmament. The 24-year-old is friendly, but equally reserved.
The RB shooting star has his arms crossed and his gaze wanders back and forth between the questioner, interpreter Babacar N’Diaye and the depth of the media room as he answers the questions. There are no full-throated slogans from Nkunku, the RB number 18 instead thanking a journalist who, when questioned, attests to him having gone from a good player to an exceptional one last season.
Nkunku’s performance in front of the reporters is an antithesis to what the French international (6 appearances so far) delivers on the football pitch. There, he is at times brash to the limit, virtuosic yet straightforward, and equipped with the coldness in action that a goal scorer and difference maker needs.
With his feet, Nkunku has put numerous exclamation marks in recent months: 57 scorer points in 52 competitive games last season, the fine-limbed man from the eastern Parisian suburb of Lagny-sur-Marne scored for RB Leipzig during the season and was the insurance policy on the way to qualifying for the top flight again as well as winning the Cup in Berlin against SC Freiburg.
However, when Nkunku talks about what he did last season, he seems almost humble. “I thank the team,” he says, “without my team I wouldn’t have been able to play so well.” He also comes back to his colleagues when asked what it means to him that the Bundesliga professionals voted him player of the season 2021/22. “The boys have helped me a lot,” he says. “I’m happy to have won this title, but I share it with my teammates. “
Don’t succumb to temptations
Nevertheless, Nkunku has caused a stir and aroused desire elsewhere. Europe’s top clubs have him on their radar. Paris St. Germain, the club where the attacking player trained and from which he joined Leipzig in 2019, expressed clear interest in a return. But Nkunku has not succumbed to the temptations.
“It’s been natural for me,” he says, “I started a task here and it’s not over yet.” Nkunku has “a lot of fun” in Leipzig, in Domenico Tedesco a coach “who gives me freedom” and the belief that he can still achieve a lot with RB. “What we have achieved is good, but we don’t want to rest on our laurels,” he makes clear, “we want even more”. However, Nkunku does not say that even more equates to the championship title. At least not directly.
But the Leipzig top star has plans to push the boundaries upwards. He wants to at least confirm his 2021/22 season performance. “I want to maintain the level or even more,” he says. And that with RB Leipzig.
The question of whether he will stay with the Saxons beyond the coming season or move to a big European club for a lot of money in the summer of 2023 seems to amuse Nkunku at first, before he answers emphatically: “I deliberately extended my contract. I didn’t extend my contract to leave the club next year.” He said he could not see brightly what would happen in the future, “but I know I feel very comfortable at RB. I still have work to do here. “
And then there’s the World Cup in Qatar this winter. Nkunku would of course love to be there, but knows about the huge competition in the French national team. “I have to work for my place in the team,” he says. Nkunku is confident that he will succeed in this.
