Ex-national coach
Joachim Löw reveals: “I fell into a hole”
January 26, 2025 – 9:48 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
Joachim Löw celebrated the greatest success of his coaching career at the World Cup in Brazil. The time afterwards was emotional for the now 64-year-old.
It’s been three and a half years since Joachim Löw left his position as national coach. Since then, the world champion coach has recovered, attended games and reflected on his time at the DFB. Last autumn, Löw admitted in an interview with SWR Sport that resigning after the 2018 World Cup would have been the right decision. Continuing was “certainly a mistake.” “After a story like that, I should have said I’d clear the way.”
The “Kicker” spoke to Löw in an interview about the time after the 2014 World Cup. When asked whether he had already thought about retiring back then, the 64-year-old replied: “I hadn’t considered that after the final in Rio. All of our goals had been achieved. And also in the European Championships and World Cup. We have already achieved a lot in tournaments and have come far, often reaching the semi-finals. We were among the best in the world and were the benchmark for others for several years.”
At the same time, he had to process the whole thing first. “Then I reflected and fell into a hole in the week after the euphoria. I asked myself: Am I still burning? At that point I initially lacked new impulses, new ideas,” said Löw, who explained: “I had for years “We worked towards a philosophy and we, the entire coaching team and Oliver Bierhoff, stayed true to ourselves against all odds. Then I suddenly had to take new paths and set new stimuli.”
But he had a hard time with that. Löw had self-doubts and lacked a brilliant idea. But: “The positive energy and the desire to keep the team at this level were always there.”
This was followed by the 2016 European Championships, in which Germany reached the semi-finals again, but then a negative series began with the debacle at the World Cup in Russia and the disappointing 2021 European Championships. Löw remembers: “The elimination in the preliminary round in Russia was a low blow, But Oliver Bierhoff and I wanted to eradicate this shame. There was a now-more-now attitude and a bit of anger that we wanted to convert into positive energy. Two or three years later I realized that it would have been the right time.”
Löw’s gaze is now clearly moving forward. He has been looking for more than a year. His goal: the 2026 World Cup. At the beginning of last year, Löw said on Welt TV: “What is also a goal for me, the 2026 World Cup, America, Canada, Mexico. I would find that exciting.” But there is no concrete team yet.