Every team needs a Lennard Maloney. A player who never flinches, who runs the tough yards and who does things that no one else wants to do (or thinks are better).
It’s not just that Maloney is willing to work harder than everyone else. He love he.
The 24-year-old is the perfect example of the type of underdog success – both individual and collective – that German football still seems to specialize in.
His club, Heidenheim, is enjoying its first season in the Bundesliga after securing a spectacular promotion last year. Just over 20 years ago, Heidenheim was a fifth-tier semi-professional company, based in a small town through which trains from major German cities do not pass directly.
They had only the ninth largest wage bill in the Second Division and are now comfortably the lowest in the top flight.
Yet Heidenheim sit comfortably in mid-table and two weeks ago beat Champions League semi-finalists Bayern Munich 3-2 at their home ground, the Voith-Arena.
Coach Frank Schmidt is the long-time author of this success story and the veteran has been able to count on players who put the team first: a trait embodied by the new midfielder of the men’s national team UNITED STATES.
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“Every team should have someone who does the dirty work,” Maloney says. “I’m the one who does the dirty work.”
In October, Maloney made Heidenheim history by becoming the first player to become a senior international. It sparked excitement and pride within the club, but none more so than at Maloney.
Maloney’s father, Martin, was an American airman who met his mother Sandy while stationed in Kenya where she was a flight attendant. The couple moved to their native Germany shortly before Lennard was born in Berlin. Their son has always been proud of his American citizenship, but he found it hard to believe when he was called up last year.
“I was visiting my girlfriend and I received a call from the club informing me that the manager of the national team had tried to contact me,” he said. “They gave him my number and on the way home – it was a four-hour drive – I got a message and it was from Gregg (Berhalter) saying he wanted to talk to me.
“All the way home I was going very slowly in the right lane thinking, ‘When is he going to call?’
“Eventually he did it and explained his ideas to me and told me he would invite me to the national camp. I hung up and had to stop and rest for half an hour. You are 24 years old and about to join the national team. This is what we dream of when we are little. I was touched.
The USMNT coach had seen the same evidence as Maloney’s opponents in Germany: He was a player who could put the dog in the spirit of the American “bulldog spirit.”
He is seventh in the ranking of Bundesliga players with the most intense runs this season so far (2,182). Maloney also ran 307.7 km (191 miles) in league matches in a strict defensive midfielder role (only 12 players have run further).
This reflects his humble and simple approach to his role within the team. A central defender earlier in his career, Maloney played in Union Berlin’s youth system without securing a place in the senior team before joining Borussia Dortmund 2, where he gained experience and even playing time. game for the first team.
After joining Heidenheim on a free transfer in 2022, Schmidt transformed the youngster into a defensive midfielder.
“I’ve always been the guy that runs a lot and tries to cover space and that’s my game,” Maloney says. “But the manager knows what you can do and how you can improve and find the right mix.
“At first I thought: ‘OK, I’ll cover the space for you but you don’t have to give me the ball’, but he knew I needed to be pushed up and recover these balls, even if I was just blocking them or clearing them, then recovering them and saving them later. It helped me develop well into the defensive midfielder position.
“I think today it is important to be flexible. You are more valuable if the coach knows he can give you different roles.
“I’m not the type of player who gets by on talent alone. I had to work for a lot of the things I have achieved now.
Maloney is taking nothing for granted in his first season of high-level football, especially as he remembers the pain it took to get there. A head injury in the final game of last season, when Heidenheim came back to beat relegated Regensburg 3-2 in injury time, forced Maloney to watch the heartbreaking finale from the dugout.
“I wouldn’t be able to watch a game like that from the bench again,” he said. “Either I’m on the field or I’m not there at all. I felt terrible – hot, cold, nervous… then the whistle blew and we knew we were promoted. Everyone ran onto the field and hugged each other and I just sat there crying. You realize what just happened.
“During the season you talk to people at the club: the goalkeeping coach or the people who work at the stadium, and they were here when the club was still in the eighth division. You already know what the club means to you and then you realize how much it means to them, so giving them that moment gives you that much more satisfaction.
The next morning, in the early hours, the team coach returned to Heidenheim to be greeted by thousands of supporters. “It was late when we got back, but it wasn’t dark at all in Heidenheim,” he remembers. “A lot of people were offering us drinks. You would finish one and get a new one immediately.
This season they have drawn at Dortmund, beaten high-flying Stuttgart and beaten Bayern at home, but Maloney is honest about the improvement in quality.
“It’s not just about how fast they move the ball, but also how fast others are in the head,” he says. “Just like set pieces; you start getting information and they already know what they want to do. They look at us and how we fit in and they find the right way to play against that, so that’s something we had to adapt to and we did it quickly.
Heidenheim are strong on set pieces and counter-attacks, with Schmidt giving each player a specialist role in both surfaces.
“I can’t go into detail because I don’t want to give too much away, but we know what we’re capable of,” Maloney said. “We are a team that knows how to handle the ball, but on set pieces against big clubs, it’s up to us to shine.
“In training we spend 15 minutes, but very focused, going over the variations of how we want to play them and adapting them to our next opponent, perhaps considering where the weaknesses are and how they defend corners. It’s very detailed.
“We are trying to adapt and with Nikky (Germany winger Jan-Niklas Beste) we have someone who can do them so well.”
If some opponents were inclined to underestimate Heidenheim at first, this is not likely to last.
“We have a special bond within this team and we work together in the same direction,” he says. “By doing that, we can beat anyone.
“We are good, but if you compare us to the bigger clubs, they have better players. But it’s about what we can do together. So we are unstoppable.
Maloney was forced to withdraw during his side’s 2-1 home defeat to RB Leipzig on Saturday, suffering a dislocated shoulder in a difficult fall, but he believes bigger tests will are waiting for next season if they remain, as expected, in the Bundesliga (Heidenheim is 10th and seven points ahead of Bochum, 16th, for the relegation play-offs).
“You have to remember where you come from,” he says. “We have worked for this and if we stay in the Bundesliga we have to work even harder next year because everyone knows us and can adapt to us. Next season will really show if we are capable of it.
If selected, this summer’s Copa America will also be an opportunity for Maloney to show that he is capable of living his dream. He covets a role in a very competitive position on the national team field and, having tasted it, his appetite is considerable.
“It was just pure excitement,” he recalls of his 25-minute debut in the 4-0 friendly win over Ghana last October. “My family came from the United States and I know my family back home had American channels working so they could watch them. It’s that thought, you know, ‘You’re about to play for an entire country.’
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“I would have been happy even if I hadn’t been on the pitch, but he replaced me against Ghana and on the flight home I thought I had just worn the jersey of an entire country.”
He was an unused substitute in the 3-0 Nations League win over Trinidad and Tobago and came on as a substitute in the 2-1 quarter-final defeat which saw the United States progress on aggregate, but he has not been selected since – partly due to an injury which coincided with CONCACAF Nations League matches in March. Maloney knows what he has to do.
“I need to work on my ball game, but that bulldog spirit should be a base,” he says. “I live it.”
Not surprisingly, Berhalter beamed when asked what attracted him to Maloney in October. “How he plays the game with really a lot of emotion, with a lot of passion,” the USMNT boss said. “We see him applauding his teammates, we see him making tackles, a really committed player.”
Given this profile, it is also no surprise that Maloney, an Arsenal fan since childhood, admires Granit Xhaka, former Arsenal player and current Bayer Leverkusen player.
“When I understood how football really works, I admired Xhaka a lot,” he says. “I loved the way he was aggressive, but also very good with the ball. It’s something I always admire. When we played against Leverkusen, it was a game where I looked at him and thought: ‘Damn, you’re actually playing against him.’
Like Xhaka, he wears his heart on his sleeve and would at the very least represent a profitable call-up for the 2026 USMNT World Cup squad.
“When I was younger I watched the World Cup all the time, so to want to be a part of it, yeah, the possibility of being a part of it is crazy,” he said. “If it doesn’t happen, I’m just proud to be a part of it and I’ll still support them.”
“But if they call me, they won’t need to get me a plane ticket to the United States: I’ll just run there.”
With that, Maloney must leave. A tough workout ended only 45 minutes ago, but he’s heading to the gym for another workout.
“There is always something to do,” he smiles. “No days off!”
(Top photo: Neil Baynes/Getty Images)