Germany’s Giulia Gwinn shuts down Playboy before Women’s World Cup

A German soccer player allegedly rejected an offer to appear in a nude Playboy cover shoot ahead of this year’s Women’s World Cup.

Giulia Gwinn, a midfielder on FC Bayern Munich and a member of Germany’s national team, was approached by Playboy at the start of the year, the publication BILD reported, but apparently turned it down as “it is not an option for her.”

“Giulia Gwinn is not only an outstanding athlete, but also a beautiful young woman. So a personality like her is naturally interesting for Playboy,” Florian Boitin, editor-in-chief and publisher of Playboy Germany, said in a statement to BILD.

The 24-year-old Gwinn has been working her way back from a cruciate ligament injury she sustained last fall.

She did not make Germany’s final selection amid her ongoing recovery and addressed the events in a June Instagram post.

“When I tore my cruciate ligament for the second time in October 2022, one of my first thoughts was: How long until the World Cup in the summer? Can I make it if everything’s going perfect? Fairly calculatively, the World Cup participation was always in. And probably I wouldn’t have believed it for so long if my rehab hadn’t gone really ideal. Very thankful for my doctors, physios and athletic trainers for being them. And in the last week of this Bundesliga season, after 7.5 months, I was able to complete parts of the team training completely without problems,” she wrote, according to an Instagram translation.

“For me, this week with the team was incredibly valuable emotionally: because I reached my personal goal. Yes, I have to rearrange this for myself in the coming days: actually being fit and still not having a chance to recommend me for one of the World Cup places. A few days you can be sad and disappointed, but then the pride of the other successfully completed rehab should definitely outweigh!”

The new report has stirred online chatter about a so-called curse, in which five players from Germany’s Under-20 squad appeared in Playboy before the 2011 World Cup but allegedly “struggled to progress in their playing careers,” The Sun reports.

The Women’s World Cup begins Thursday, July 20.