Exhausted and with a lot of knowledge, the German footballers boarded the charter plane home in Birmingham.
Four and a half months before the start of the European Championship against Denmark, national coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg still has a lot of work to do. Despite the sobering 1:3 against England at the end of the Arnold Clark Cup, the bottom of the table did not let the optimism for the tournament in July on the island be taken away.
Tasks for the German selection before the EM
“We had instructive games here against super nations,” said Paris Saint-Germain captain Sara Däbritz. “I think we’ll be able to take a lot from it. I’m sure that we’ll be ready for the European Championship and we can beat teams like that.” Voss-Tecklenburg now wants to prioritize what the DFB women have to work on – “because we will have very little time with the entire squad”.
The European Championship starts on July 8th against Denmark, other preliminary round opponents are the strong Spaniards and Finland. Before that, the DFB women are preparing for the World Cup qualifiers on April 9 against Portugal in Bielefeld and on April 12 in Serbia, as well as a friendly in June against an as yet unknown opponent. The EM training camps are from June 12th to 18th and from June 21st to 29th in Herzogenaurach.
At least a dozen European Championship candidates were missing from the test tournament in England – and there are a number of question marks, especially for experienced players: Will captain Alexandra Popp (VfL Wolfsburg) make it back in time after her second knee operation? Will Bayern Munich defender Marina Hegering, who has been injured repeatedly, remain fit? When will Melanie Leupolz from Chelsea get back in shape after her Corona consequences? At least for Popp, Wolfsburg’s sporting director Ralf Kellermann gave the all-clear on Thursday: “She will be available to us again in the very near future.”
Chatzialexiou: “Want to play for titles”
Voss-Tecklenburg will need experienced players for the eight-time European champion and two-time world champion in the summer. Despite the dry spell with missing out on the Olympics, the claim is high. “We don’t want to play, we want to play for titles,” said Joti Chatzialexiou, head of national teams at the German Football Association and companion of the DFB selection. “We have to work on that within the association and also with the clubs.”
Chatzialexiou sees a need for optimization in data collection, for example. This has long been standard for men – in the women’s Bundesliga they are “a bit Neanderthal”. The fact that the German players also have to improve athletically was shown against the robust English women.
“Today was extremely physical,” said Voss-Tecklenburg after the deserved defeat against the tournament winner. The Spaniards, against whom the DFB women played 1-1, were “extremely technical and ball-safe”. And even after the 1-0 draw against Canada, the 54-year-old praised “this physicality, this spirit” in the Olympic champion in Rio.
Voss-Tecklenburg: “The killer instinct is missing”
Further insights in the highly talented but sometimes hectic German team were: There is a lack of “precision, finding solutions under pressure” and the “killer instinct”, according to Voss-Tecklenburg. The opponents in the World Cup qualification are only conditionally good for improving there.
“The English women were a bit more ripped off today,” said goal scorer Lina Magull from FC Bayern. That was “annoying, but the tournament just shows us again what we have to work on, that we still have a lot of potential”. Nobody denies this to the DFB women either: the learning effect was enormous, especially for the offensive talents Jule Brand (19/Hoffenheim), Klara Bühl (21/Munich) and Nicole Anyomi (22/Frankfurt) and the young defence.
“We put a lot of heart, a lot of passion, a lot of mentality into it,” said Voss-Tecklenburg, but the calmness of the game was often missing. Nevertheless, she gave the younger generation a promising certificate: “They are open, they are inquisitive, they are cool. It’s really fun that we currently have really exciting, young, international players in Germany. And they put pressure on them established.”