USMNT star Tillmann reveals why he moved to Leverkusen in the summer

Martin Macdonald

• 18 Oct 2025 11:00 CDT
• 2 min read

News

USMNT star Malik Tillman has revealed that he opted to move to Bayer Leverkusen in the summer in order to ensure his place in the 2026 World Cup squad.

Tillman was born in Nuremberg, Germany and played for every Germany young squad from Under-15s all the way up to Under-21s. However, in May of 2022 he officially switched allegiance to the United States national team and subsequently made his debut in a 3-0 friendly victory against Morocco.

He has since evolved into one of head coach Mauricio Pochettino's key attackers.

Following an excellent season with PSV in 2024/25, Tillman earned a €40 million (£34.7m) switch to German giants Leverkusen and the player says it is important that he decided to play at as high a level as possible before the World Cup which will take place partly in the USA.

“Obviously if you want to be at the World Cup you have to play as much as you can and be in the best shape possible,” he told Sports Illustrated.

“And then obviously it plays a role in coming to [Leverkusen], the surroundings I have here. The system we play, the coach. But then, yeah it’s not my decision if the coach picks me for the World Cup. I just have to give my best to be basically ready for the call up if it comes. I mean obviously that’s the big goal, but I’m here now, it’s about the club now.

"It’s a long season and as I said, we want to be successful. And want to win titles. And we have to or I have to focus on this first and then the World Cup comes in eight months now, so it’s still a long time to go."

As the USA is one of the host nations for the World Cup, the last competitive matches they played before that tournament was the 2025 Gold Cup. Tillman starred in that competition, scoring three goals and he has praised the atmosphere in the squad at that time as World Cup preparations continue.

“If we are one team, if we have close connection and we fight for each other, then we can really achieve things,” the 23-year-old explained.

“If you look at the squad that we had, maybe some people didn’t expect us to go this far. But as I said, we were very close. We had a lot of fun together, and then in the serious moments, we were serious enough. Also this was the last competitive matches that we had before the World Cup, so this was also very important for us.”

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