It has been a transformative 2024 for Germany.

Their trip to Hungary, for their final international of the year, ended in a 1-1 draw last night but the overall progress has been pronounced. Felix Nmecha had given the visitors the lead before Dominik Szoboszlai’s 98th-minute penalty denied the Germans victory — though it was not enough to prevent Julian Nagelsmann’s side from winning a Nations League group they dominated.

Germany finished unbeaten in Group A3. They scored 18 goals in their six games against the Hungarians, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Netherlands, winning four. Friday’s draw will tell us which of Croatia, Italy and Denmark they’ll play over two legs in March for a place in June’s semi-finals.

Appointed in September 2023, Nagelsmann inherited a side at Germany’s lowest ebb in a generation, but in 14 months has positioned them as one of the favourites for the 2026 World Cup.

Off the pitch, this team have also re-engaged a disinterested public with their national team. Germans are watching Germany again. Germans are interested in Germany again.

In January, the broadcaster RTL will release a documentary about the 2024 European Championship. “Unser Team — Die Heim-EM 2024” (Our Team — the home European Championship 2024) sounds like a strangely saccharine recollection of a tournament that ended in a quarter-final defeat, even if it was to eventual champions Spain. Germany are four-time World Cup winners and three-time Euros champions themselves and, under normal circumstances, such an early elimination would be followed by a root-and-branch review.

But times have changed, and the documentary will be received well. Euro 2024 was Germany’s best tournament performance since making the semis at the same competition eight years before and arrested a downward trend which, at times, had started to feel semi-permanent.

The country, too, is trudging in the gloom. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government has collapsed and with elections looming at the beginning of 2025 — and myriad social and geopolitical issues swirling in the background — the future has acquired a nebulous, even threatening quality.

At the time, the European Championship felt like a four-week distraction from those issues. No surprise, then, that fans are eager to hurry back to that atmosphere. Or that some of the symbols from the summer are still being clung to.

In Freiburg on Saturday night, Germany’s pink away shirt decorated the stands. Peter Schilling’s Major Tom, the ubiquitous anthem, played after each goal in the 7-0 win against Bosnia and Herzegovina. And in the months since the tournament ended, Andre Schnura, the previously unknown saxophonist who led the fans on their merry dance, has been playing a nationwide tour, his popularity undimmed.

A few weeks ago, Schnura’s trademark sunglasses even became an exhibit in the country’s national football museum in Dortmund. Later the same day, he stood alongside Rudi Voller — his idol, whose shirt he wore in the fan parks — to draw serial title winners Bayern Munich against Bayer Leverkusen, the side who unseated them last season after 11 years as champions, in the next round of the DFB-Pokal, Germany’s equivalent of the FA Cup.

Schnura is a remarkable story.

A music teacher who lost his job before the tournament started, he picked up his saxophone, headed for the various host cities, and started to play. Within a week, he was among the most famous people in the country, embodying Germany’s determination to enjoy itself.

But the team itself did more than anyone to build that mood and is still helping to sustain it.

They are winning, which matters, and they promise to only get better. While Nagelsmann has enviable resources to pick from, the culture of what he has created seems especially important, as do the players who — in a different era — might not have been fashionable enough to receive a chance.

Borussia Monchengladbach forward Tim Kleindienst is one of those, and he has been one of the stories of this international break. The 6ft 4in (194cm) forward scored his first two international goals against Bosnia and Herzegovina, and — more remarkably — has scored at club level in each of Germany’s top four divisions.

Often mistaken for a simple target man, 29-year-old Kleindienst is an outstanding one- and two-touch player who takes chances and works hard. With Niclas Fullkrug injured and Maximilian Beier out of favour, he looks certain to make the World Cup squad in 2026, assuming Germany qualify.

Kleindienst has scored in the top four divisions in Germany (Simon Hofmann/Getty Images)

Eighteen months ago, that would have sounded ridiculous.

Kleindienst had not made an appearance in the Bundesliga for over four years and had not scored a goal in the domestic top flight in five. However, in the 100th minute of Heidenheim’s final 2. Bundesliga game of the 2022-23 season, he scored to clinch an improbable promotion, setting his career on a new, fairytale trajectory.

He then scored 12 league goals to help Heidenheim stay up last season, despite them having the smallest budget in the league and, improbably, to qualify for the Europa Conference League, too. That all earned him a €7million (£5.8m; $7.4m) transfer to Gladbach in July, where his goals, his awareness and ultimately his quality earned him his first call-up last month.

Nagelsmann’s great success has been to make the national team seem accessible to players such as Kleindienst. While it would have been politically easier to keep picking big-club players irrespective of form, he has chosen to reward productivity wherever it has occurred.

Serge Gnabry has recently returned to the squad, so too has Leroy Sane, but the international career of Leon Goretzka, their Bayern Munich team-mate, seems to be over. High-profile Borussia Dortmund players, including Karim Adeyemi, Niklas Sule, Julian Brandt and Emre Can have also spent time out of the squad. Some have returned — most recently Brandt — but only once their performances have warranted selection.

Last season, Maximilian Mittelstadt, Chris Fuhrich, Waldemar Anton (now Dortmund) and Deniz Undav were rewarded with caps. Kleindienst’s former Heidenheim team-mate, Jan-Niklas Beste — who has one of the finest left feet in German football and almost certainly its most impressive beard — became the first international nomination in the club’s history at the start of this year, before having to withdraw through injury. Mainz’s Jonathan Burkardt was called up in October, despite their meagre form in the Bundesliga.

Nagelsmann’s reward for his approach has been public buy-in and the retention of everything that was awakened in the summer.

His Germany find themselves in the enviable position of being extremely talented while possessing just enough to capture the imagination. If Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz glint with class, then someone like Kleindienst — or Fullkrug before him — represents something more relatable.

It has created a German side their public likes and, more importantly, deeply believes in.

And why not? Germany are on a journey that still seems to have far to go.

(Top photo: Ferenc Isza/AFP via Getty Images)