Mr Serge Gnabry was always going to be a footballer. “I had no other interests as a kid,” says the German winger. “I didn’t play with Lego or whatever. It was just going outside and playing football. In kindergarten and at school, it was all about football. My dad always tells me that I’d kick everything in the house – cans, their shins, whatever I could find.”

It is no surprise that Gnabry was seen as a precocious talent. By the time he was 15, Arsenal had agreed to pay a six-figure sum to bring him to north London. A year later, having just turned 16, Gnabry packed his bags and made the move from Stuttgart. Signing for one of England’s biggest club’s was an obvious step career-wise, but moving to another country as a teenager was not easy.

“It was difficult for the first couple of months, being away from most of my family,” he says. “I made the decision quite early on that I had to take the chance. So many people told me it wasn’t going to work out, but I was never afraid of taking the risk, so I said I’d go and see what Arsenal was like. It’s such a huge club, so when they come for you, it’s hard to turn them down.”

Being at Arsenal helped Gnabry hone his footballing skills, but being a young man in London also shaped him. “When you turn 18, you can go places,” he says. “You’re more grown up and life starts to get better.” The impact of that time is clear. Gnabry still speaks English with a slight north London twang and living in a big city was eye opening.

“It’s so multicultural – a lot of different people, a lot of different styles, a lot of different areas you can go to,” he says. One legacy of this is his interest in fashion, something that developed during his five years in London. “Coming from a small town in Germany and then living in Stuttgart, it’s different,” he says. “In London, seeing a lot of people wearing all sorts of colours and styles, just expressing themselves, that was cool. When I saw something I liked, I’d think, why not do it yourself? Why not wear it if you like it?”

Gnabry’s star was on the rise, but he suffered some setbacks. In search of some first-team experience, he was loaned to West Bromwich Albion in 2015, when he was 20. He returned to Arsenal six months later, having played just once. The then-West Brom manager Mr Tony Pulis claimed Gnabry was “not at the level” required by the club. Looking back, Gnabry says the experience helped him.

“It had been a quick rise getting into the first team,” says Gnabry. “All that success, all that attention on me meant a lot of people were trying to come into my circle. When it didn’t go well – I’d been injured for a while and wasn’t playing much – I noticed people that didn’t show the same interest. It was an important time to realise how people are and how this industry works. I learnt whom I could rely on.”

His time at West Bromwich Albion affected his family, too. “It was so bad that some members of my family were asking where this was going to go, if I would ever get back to that level,” he says. “Then you start to doubt yourself.”

Six months after returning from West Brom, Gnabry decided that his English sojourn was over. He left Arsenal and signed for Werder Bremen in Germany. To many, the move to a smaller club in his home country was an admission that he hadn’t made it at football’s top-flight. But Gnabry proved to be a revelation.

In his only season at Bremen, he scored 11 times in 27 games. By November of that season, he’d made his first appearance for the German national team and, a week later, he scored a hat-trick on his second. After being written off at 20, aged 21, he was a playing at the top level for his country and was playing, and scoring, regularly in a major league. Gnabry had arrived.

“In the youth teams, I never really experienced tough times because I was always flying high,” he says of his difficulties, which he sees now as pivotal to his later success. “I was proud of how I managed it, how I came out of it and how it turned out.”

Within a year of joining Bremen, Gnabry signed for Bayern Munich, Germany’s most successful club and one of the greatest in Europe. He spent his first season on loan, building experience and confidence, but within a year he was an important part of a world-beating team. The move to Bayern was the culmination of one of Gnabry’s long-held dreams.

“Bayern tried to sign me when I was 10 or 11, but my dad said it was too early,” he says. “As a German kid, you either hate Bayern or you love them. It’s the biggest club and they’re so successful, so you want to play for them some day. For that dream to come true was crazy, to be at Bayern and playing at such a high level within two or three years of leaving Arsenal.”

The success didn’t stop there. In Gnabry’s second full season at Bayern Munich, the club won a historic treble – the Bundesliga, the domestic cup and the Champions League – and became only the second team to do it twice. “In 2016, when I moved to Germany, if someone had told me that by 2020 I would win the Champions League, obviously I would have signed up,” says Gnabry. “We’re one of the most successful teams ever at Bayern, one of the most successful in the whole history of football. Being part of that, playing a massive role in it, is a big achievement. I don’t think I will ever forget it.”

Five years later, Gnabry’s ambition remains undimmed. When he signed a new contract with the club earlier this year, he said he wanted to “win everything again”. And then there is the small matter of Qatar. Gnabry is an important part of the German squad. He played in every Germany game at last year’s Euros, but this will be his first World Cup. He missed the 2018 tournament due to injury.

As if winning every club competition and aiming for World Cup glory weren’t enough, Gnabry’s ambitions stretch beyond football. In 2017, he joined Common Goal, an organisation that aims to tackle “the greatest social challenges of our time” through partnering with footballers who pledge one per cent of their income. According to estimates, this figure could be £135,000 a year for Gnabry. “It felt good to join a big movement,” he says. “If there are a lot of people working together, it can be bigger and it’s going to be better.”

Gnabry is working on a special project with Common Goal, which will launch within the next couple of years. This was motivated by a visit in 2019 to Côte d’Ivoire, where his father was born. “Being there and seeing it is so different from being here in Europe just giving money,” he says. “Seeing it, experiencing it and seeing what people are doing – it would change everyone’s mind on why they give to charity.”

For Gnabry, the reasons he gives to charity go back to his childhood. “I was raised always to share and always to help others, so it will always be important to me,” he says.

He plans to bring his drive and ambition – the same drive and ambition that took him from Stuttgart to north London to one of the most successful teams of all time – to his charitable work. “I want to keep on helping people,” he says. “I want to make the world a better place.”