It came as no surprise who was the center of attention on media day at the Germany women's training camp in the small southern town of Herzogenaurach.

With Alexandra Popp having called time on her international career it is Bayern Munich's Giulia Gwinn who has been tasked with leading Germany into next month's Euros in Switzerland.

"I feel a great honor and a great deal of pride," Gwinn told DW, five months after her appointment as Germany's new captain. 

"I feel a different (level of) responsibility, but think I have adjusted to it well," she said.

"I try to listen to what's going on in the team and spread positivity," she added. "We all deal with each other very openly and honestly."

'A great personality'

Now one of the best right-backs in the world, Gwinn does what you would expect a captain to do. She leads by example, pushing herself to her physical limits and constantly communicating with her teammates.

"She's a great personality," Chelsea midfielder Sjoeke Nüsken said

"But she can also be loud and lead the way when things aren't going well on the pitch. And she can also kick all of us in the backside," she added with a grin.

"We really have a great captain," said experienced midfielder Sara Däbritz.

'As if her life depended on it'

Gwinn started playing football at the age of eight – as the only girl on a boys' team at TSG Ailingen, her hometown club in the southwest of Germany.

"I always wanted to assert myself, show who I was and what I could do," Gwinn said in an interview with German television. "She played like her life depended on it," Gwinn's mother Gabi said.

Gwinn got her first taste of international football at the age of 13, when, in 2013, she was called up to the German women's U15 team for the first time. A year later, she signed for Freiburg.

"Football is everything to me," she said in a TV documentary. "It's passion, it's what fulfills me, and it's what I put a lot of heart into."

'The worst diagnosis'

After four years at Freiburg, Gwinn moved to Bayern Munich in 2019. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, but in 2020 she suffered the first serious setback of her career, tearing a cruciate ligament in her right knee during a European Championship qualifier against Ireland.

Just over two years later, she tore a cruciate ligament in her left knee.

"It's the worst diagnosis you can receive," she said. "You know it will mean a very long and difficult period of suffering."

The injury ruled Gwinn, who had made her national team debut in 2017, out of the 2023 World Cup. But since her recovery there has been no looking back, with two league title wins and a German Cup with Bayern in the two seasons since.

"It was very bitter that I missed the tournament (World Cup) because of the injury, but I see it as a great opportunity to be back."

She returned to action for the national team just after the tournament down under, in a Nations League match against Denmark September 2023, and was a member of the Germany team that won bronze at the Olympic Games in Paris.

' We'll be very entertaining'

Looking ahead to next month's Euros, Gwinn is positive about Germany's potential on the pitch but sees her team's role as much bigger than that.

"We feel that tournaments are the best opportunity to take women's football to a new level. It's our responsibility to promote it and initiate the next step," she said.

"We're developing a very good spirit here, with our personalities and the desire to achieve something great together," she added.

Having produced a number of high-scoring performances in recent months, Germany will be looking to continue in a similar vein in Switzerland.

"We're all about attacking power; we have players who perform at the very highest level and score goals," Gwinn said. "We'll be very entertaining in the summer."

This article was originally published in German.