Giulia Gwinn’s injury and the associated European Championship out is a hard blow for Germany. TV expert Julia Šimić classifies the failure.
Kim Steinke reports from Zurich
The European Championship ended for Giulia Gwinn after only 36 minutes of play. After the inner ligament injury in the 2-0 opening victory against Poland on Friday evening against Poland, the captain of the German team will be missing for several weeks. A real misfortune for the former international and TV expert Julia Šimić, as she said in an interview with T-Online.
“First of all, you have to say that it is a shock. Coach Christian Wück has called it a ‘difficult to win’. That will now mean a kink for the team. You also noticed it in the game: The players were unsettled at first, but at first it managed to change the lever,” said Šimić, who also sees the team a bit in the bring debt. “They played, won, won for Giuli. And they owe it a little too because she took a lot in the preparation time – also in the media.”
DFB captain Gwinn had contracted the knee injury after a rescue act against Poland Ewa Pajor. Šimić impressed the scene: “It was symbolic of the fact that the injury in a scene happens in which Giuli also prevents the possible goal, throws in – and put itself in the service of the team again and has to pay so expensive.”
The Bayern star will probably imagine that the “happiness in misfortune” was. “Lucky because she had already suffered two cruciate ligament tears and lacked for months. Now it is not so serious, it will be significantly shorter. It is a giant cut because she focused on the tournament and was looking forward to the following for weeks. Now as a captain, she has played a new role that would have been so important for the team. All of this will be certain in the team,” said Julia Šimić.
All of this also affects the work of national coach Christian Wück, who is now facing a big challenge – namely to find the right replacement for Gwinn. “Because that’s the position that you can’t replace so well,” said Šimić clearly. Against Poland, Carlotta Wamser came into play, which in her eyes did “extremely well”: “It worked immediately, was decisively involved in the 2-0 and kept everything away. These were game -decisive actions.”
However: “Calle (nickname of Carlotta Wamser, editor’s note) is one in terms of quality that can of course help the team, but she is not a trained defender who can simply play a tournament like this.” After all, she just played three caps. Nevertheless, she could do the team well as an invigorating element.
What is now important before the last two group games is that the team develops a “now-first-law mentality”. “The German team has always been involved in the media that the absolute world class is not in all positions and that you may have to classify yourself behind France, Spain and England,” said Julia Šimić ‘.
“And yet as a German team you always have a chance because you often have the unity and get through the collective, tactically always set very well and every player is subordinate to the match plan – now definitely more.”