Arsenal starlet Lisa Baum (19) looks forward to first Germany senior team cap

There has not been much time for Lisa Baum to stop and take stock. A year ago, the teenage winger was still establishing herself at RB Leipzig. This summer, Arsenal paid a reported Bundesliga-record €600,000 to take her to North London. Five league starts, two goals and one senior Germany call-up later, the 19-year-old suddenly finds herself preparing for another potential milestone.

"Yes, there's a lot going on as of late," Baum remarked at Germany's pre-match press conference this week.

That may qualify as something of an understatement.

Baum has risen from German youth football to one of Europe's biggest clubs and the senior national team at remarkable speed. Yet, when asked to reflect on the journey, she speaks less about the size of the stages now confronting her than the places she came from.

"I'm very grateful for the place that I began at [Hamburg] and the place where I developed further [Leipzig]," Baum said. "I think the key was to be patient and be myself. I think about home a lot as my family still lives there."

Those two ideas – patience and remaining herself – run neatly through Baum's story.

From Tanzania and Ahrensbök to the Bundesliga

Baum was born in Tanzania in 2006 to a Tanzanian mother and German father. She moved to the small Schleswig-Holstein town of Ahrensbök at the age of five and began playing football with boys at local club MTV Ahrensbök.

Baum moved on to Pansdorf, then Hamburg, before eventually arriving at RB Leipzig in 2025. The more important part of her Leipzig year concerned everything else. Head coach Jonas Stephan later admitted that there had initially been a small question over how Baum would respond to the demands required to turn obvious talent into an elite career.

"After one week of training, I knew who we had signed," Stephan remarked in an interview with Kicker . "She understood how hard she has to work."

Leipzig worked heavily on Baum's defensive game and physical output. She occasionally featured at wing-back, learned to expend more energy without the ball and gradually improved the running numbers that initially required work.

Baum embraced it. The results became increasingly evident after the winter break. Eight of Baum's nine scorer points during the 2025/26 campaign arrived after the turn of the year as she developed from promising talent into one of Leipzig's decisive attacking players.

By the summer, keeping her was no longer realistic.

Record move to Arsenal quickly justified

Arsenal won a race involving several major European clubs and paid €600,000 to bring Baum to England. Even that step has so far looked surprisingly comfortable. Baum started each of Arsenal's opening five league fixtures. She scored the winner away at Brighton on the opening day and later added another goal against Manchester City.

Established internationals have found themselves competing with the teenager for minutes. Arsenal striker Alessia Russo offered an early indication of how highly Baum was already regarded. Asked at the PFA Awards which teammate might find herself attending the ceremony the following year, Russo named the club's new German winger.

The football itself remains recognizable. Baum still wants the ball at her feet. She still attacks defenders directly. She can operate naturally from the left or start on the right before driving inside onto her stronger foot. Her low passes into attacking areas and willingness to shoot give her game a directness that Germany head coach Christian Wück has also noticed.

Baum herself traces much of that style back to something considerably less structured than an Arsenal training session.

"My way of playing football came a lot from playing on the local pitch," she explained this week. "Just playing freely when you aren't really thinking about anything."

Germany call-up fulfils a childhood dream

Wück rewarded Baum's Arsenal start with her first senior Germany call-up for the October friendlies against Australia and Japan. She had previously collected five U23 caps. The senior invitation represented, in Baum's words, a "childhood dream."

Her arrival also offers Germany something slightly different. Wück now has a naturally left-footed wide attacker capable of operating on either flank and attacking inward from the right. A senior debut could follow against Australia in Karlsruhe.

Rapid movement has not translated into detachment. Baum remains connected with the clubs and people involved earlier in her career.

"I still visit my old clubs and the old friends that I have there," she said. "I still follow HSV [women]. I just watched them against Wolfsburg [last weekend]. I like watching HSV."

That attachment mirrors what people from Ahrensbök say about her. Her former youth coach Kai Schmütz told Kicker that Baum still keeps in touch and returns when her schedule permits. For a player whose career has accelerated so dramatically, he views that as evidence that very little has changed underneath it.

There have also been considerably harder experiences along the way. Baum lost her 17-year-old brother in a car accident in 2022. She has previously spoken about wearing his name on tape during matches and carrying his initials on her boots.

The loss remains part of her story without defining the footballer she has become. Those who worked with Baum in Leipzig instead repeatedly return to her openness, humour, courage and willingness to work. Stephan went considerably further.

"If she keeps that up," the Leipzig coach said of Baum's mentality in his Kicker interview. "She will certainly become one of the greatest players in the world."

That is an enormous projection for any 19-year-old.