“You can’t take that away from the players”
Julian Nagelsmann: Will this peculiarity be his downfall?
By Swantje Flinder
June 12, 2026 – 7:15 a.mReading time: 2 minutes
Julian Nagelsmann, as national coach, relies more on creativity and occasionally makes unpopular decisions. Could this cost Germany the World Cup?
On Sunday at 7 p.m. the time has come: Germany will play its first World Cup game against the team from Curaçao. In the DFB team’s last test match against the USA, national coach Julian Nagelsmann refrained from experimenting and put together a starting eleven that would also be realistic in the first German group game.
He showed, among other things, in the 2024 European Championship quarter-finals against Spain that this does not always correspond to his actual philosophy, which is characterized by creativity. Surprisingly, he chose Emre Can in the starting line-up instead of Robert Andrich, who had played successfully in the previous games. The effect: The DFB team took too long to regroup and the Spaniards had their first chances early on. Is the national coach’s approach too risky for the current World Cup?
In the t-online podcast “Nagelsmann – The Youngest One”, Michael Reschke, including former technical director at FC Bayern, talks about Nagelsmann’s wealth of ideas. “I think it’s completely normal that Julian deals intensively with opponents, that he has his ideas, that he sometimes goes a step too far in terms of creativity and ideas,” explains Reschke.
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Furthermore, not every idea can work; this is in the nature of the game, he continues. “There is still an opposing team and a coach who also thinks that his plan will work 100 percent.” But that wouldn’t diminish its own quality. “At the end of the day only one will win the Champions League and only one will be European champion and only one will be world champion and the others are still good.”
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Nagelsmann is repeatedly accused of wanting to come up with very special tactics for special games in order to prove his coaching skills. Critics accuse him of emulating his role model, Pep Guardiola.
Stefan Effenberg advocates for players to take personal responsibility
But how much influence can and should coaches have in modern football? Stefan Effenberg says you don’t have to explain everything about micromanagement to seasoned professionals. “You have to be a bit free as a player and decide certain things yourself. That’s called personal responsibility, so you can’t take that away from the players,” says Effenberg.