DFB sports director Rudi Völler does not expect FC Bayern’s sporting crisis to have an impact on the German national team and the home European Championships in the summer.
“We were able to separate that before when I was still a player. Success and failure in the club and then to the national team. That will be the case now,” said Völler on the “Welt TV” channel. “No matter which team becomes champion, you know it’s a European Championship, it’s a different competition and you personally want to be successful there.”
FC Bayern, which recently suffered painful defeats in the top Bundesliga game at Bayer Leverkusen (0:3) and in the first leg of the round of 16 in the Champions League at Lazio Rome (0:1), represents a large proportion of the national players in the national coach’s squad Julian Nagelsmann.
The Munich team is threatened with a season without a title. The next international matches in Lyon against France and in Frankfurt/Main against the Netherlands are scheduled for March.
Völler reported that he could have stayed in office longer after his interim stint on the national coaching bench in Dortmund against France (2-1) last September. “If I had wanted to, I could certainly have made it to the European Championships,” said the 63-year-old. “But I know that there are also coaches, in this case Julian Nagelsmann, who can do it better.”