The German national soccer team suffered a defeat in the international test match in Poland and had to accept the next setback about a year before the start of the European Championships at home.
Jakub Kiwior (31st) scored the goal for the hosts in the 0-1 draw in front of 60,000 fans in Warsaw’s National Stadium. After the last meager 3:3 in the benefit game against the Ukraine, there was no victory in the second test game either.
Flick with nine changes
Flick made nine changes to his starting XI compared to the Ukraine game. 21-year-old Malick Thiaw made his international debut. In addition to the central defender, Antonio Rüdiger and Thilo Kehrer played in the back three in front of goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, before Emre Can acted in the sixth position.
Only Rüdiger and captain Joshua Kimmich reappeared in the starting XI. Jonas Hofmann and Benjamin Henrichs came from the outside positions. Kai Havertz, Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz played on the offensive. Poland’s squad was led by former Dortmund star Jakub Blaszczykowski, who was capturing his 109th and final cap as captain after a four-year hiatus. The two-time world footballer and long-time Bayern professional Robert Lewandowski ran up the storm.
The newly formed German team needed a long time to get the first chance to score, despite sometimes long periods of possession. The team noticed that they had never played together like this before and that defensive stability was initially a priority. The first emotional highlight was Blaszczykowski’s substitution after around 15 minutes.
Goal conceded after a corner
It was only in the 23rd minute that Kehrer forced goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny to put in the first effort with a long-range shot. But he safely parried the bouncer. Otherwise, the Germans had enormous difficulties with the tightly staggered Polish defense. After almost half an hour, Szczesny had to stretch more when Havertz shot.
The goal then fell out of the blue on the opposite side. Jakub Kiwior was too free from a corner, got his head on the ball in front of Kehrer and scored a touchdown from eight meters to make it 1-0 for the Poles – despite all caution and again in a standard situation, in which in the Defense simply the assignment was missing. And that was it in an otherwise uneventful first half, with which the Israeli referee Orel Grinfeld had no problems either.
Double chance after the break
The Germans surprisingly started the second half with a double chance. First, Szczesny parried a powerful shot from the substitute and then very agile Robin Gosens from an acute angle, a little later Kimmich only hit the crossbar from 20 meters. After that, however, it fizzled out again, the German attack momentum.
Instead, the team presented itself again error-prone. First Thiaw had to iron out a bad pass from Kimmich with a foul on Michal Skoras and received a yellow card for it, a little later he was challenged in a running duel with Arkadiusz Milik after a long pass from Poland, but cleared the action cleanly. In general, Thiaw was a ray of hope in the German game. Another German chance in the 66th minute, but Havertz was denied by Szczesny after a nice individual performance in the penalty area.
Szczesny outstanding in the end
Flick brought in two new offensive players in Leroy Sané and Niklas Füllkrug, but the final offensive was a long time coming. It became dangerous in the 78th minute after a free-kick from the right, but Thiaw failed after some good preliminary work from Rüdiger with a spectacular shot at Szczesny. As a result, the Germans pushed for an equalizer, but also had to defend against dangerous counterattacks by Poland again and again. In the 88th minute, the outstanding Szczesny then scraped a header from Marius Wolf off the goal line and then parried a header from Leon Goretzka. In the end it was no longer enough to equalize for the DFB-Elf.
Rüdiger: “The greed is missing, the last pass”
“It’s symbolic for us. They score immediately with a chance”said Rüdiger in the ARD sports show: “The last greed is missing, the last pass, and then you lose a game like that.” Gosens was also disappointed. “I was hoping that we would finally celebrate a sense of achievement, get in a spirit of optimism, get the country behind us”he said, “We all know that it’s only about results, about victories. We played a very good second half, but you have to reward yourself.”
Flick was particularly dissatisfied with the first half. “That was not enough”, he said: “The team tried in the second half but they need to be more in front of goal.” But the national coach promised: “We’ll have a team that works by June next year.”
The German team will continue with another friendly on Tuesday (June 20th, 2023). Then in Gelsenkirchen Colombia is the opponent.