Waldemar Anton’s first senior call-up for Germany in March 2024 turned a steady club career into a national-team breakthrough. The defender, who was 27 when he was named in the squad, has since moved from VfB Stuttgart to Borussia Dortmund and later stayed in the frame for UEFA Euro 2024 and the 2026 World Cup.
That is why his name keeps drawing searches now. Anton, who was born on 20 July 1996 in Olmaliq, Uzbekistan, has spent almost all of his life in Germany after moving there with his family at the age of two. He came through Mühlenberger SV before joining Hannover 96 in 2008, then took the next step at VfB Stuttgart, where he was named captain in 2023 after a successful 2023/24 season.
His path into the senior Germany setup also helps explain the late timing. Anton had already played 11 matches for the U21 side and was part of the squad that won the U21 European Championship in Poland in 2017, but the senior team only followed years later, once his club form had pushed him into view. By the time the March 2024 nomination arrived, he had built the kind of consistency coaches tend to trust: a defender who had already handled responsibility at club level and was ready for a bigger stage.
There is also a more personal side to that story. Anton has said that his family gives him strength, especially time with Jenni and their two children, and that doing wild things with them is a major source of support. He has also spoken of the discipline behind his rise, saying he always wants to give everything even when training is hard or he is carrying minor knocks, and that his parents taught him to believe a goal is reachable if he keeps pursuing it.
Yet his background also contains a line he drew for himself years ago. In 2018, Anton ruled out a professional career for Uzbekistan and said he had no one left there, a reminder that the country of his birth is not the country that shaped his football life. He also once said he had wanted to become a karate fighter as a child, inspired by Jean-Claude Van Damme films, which makes the route from a childhood dream to Germany international feel even less predictable. What remains unanswered is his exact role under Julian Nagelsmann for Germany, but the selection itself now looks less like a surprise and more like the result of years of steady proof.
