Champions League winners Toni Kroos and Antonio Rüdiger joined German Euro 2024 training on Wednesday and aim to boost the team with their Real Madrid winning mentality.
"What we can take with us from Madrid is the killer instinct," centre back Rüdiger told reporters.
Real won a record-extending 15th title in the elite event on Saturday, 2-0 over Borussia Dortmund, ruthlessly deciding matters late in the game like so often before, and after earlier being outplayed by Dortmund who paid for not scoring.
The full squad, which also includes the Dortmund pair of Nico Schlotterbeck and Niclas Füllkrug, is now training at the Herzogenaurach base camp but full back Maximilian Mittelstädt was missing on Wednesday to have his workload eased a little bit.
Rüdiger and midfielder Kroos, who will end his career after the Euros, are set to be starters in the final tune-up game on Friday against Greece, having not been present yet in Monday's 0-0 against Ukraine.
The team was visited by German basketball national team coach Gordon Herbert, and his players Moritz and Franz Wagner, who shared their knowledge with the footballers how to win big events, a year after Germany won a maiden basketball World Cup title.
"The basketball guys have had great success. And of course we can learn a thing or two from them," Rüdiger said.
Rüdiger's coach Julian Nagelsmann has a similar approach as Herbert now, with a clearly defined role for each player, a core group of starters and hungry reserves.
"I watched a documentary about the German basketball players. You could see the conversations between the coach and players before the World Cup. It became clear that each individual knew their role months before the tournament," Nagelsmann said recently.
Rüdiger said: "Julian said that I should be a leader in my role. Everyone knows where they fit in, so there are no complications."
Rüdiger stopped short of saying that this was not the case at the last major tournaments where Germany went out in the group stage of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and in the last 16 at Euro 2020.
Nagelsmann also experimented in his first matches last year but then changed his strategy from March onwards, helping Germany beat France and the Netherlands before the Ukraine draw.
The two victories raised hope that Germany can play a good tournament after all, and Nagelsmann told the Spielmacher (Playmaker) podcast that "you should dream about it and imagine what it would be like to be in the final or maybe even win the thing."
Germany open the Euros on June 14 against Scotland, with Hungary and Switzerland the other group stage opponents.
Nagelsmann said he has a plan B ready for the final minutes of the games should not everything go according to plan.
"Of course, we already have an emergency plan for what happens if there are ten minutes left to play and we absolutely need a goal," he said.
"We've also trained it so that the players know that when I call out ‘emergency plan’, what we have to do now, the process is there."
