“In the end it’s just football,” said Rudi Völler, the 1990 world champion, putting things into perspective in 2023. Völler, responsible for the national team within the German Football Association, is trying to calm the mood within the organization these days. Because the German national team is in a persistent crisis. With growing panic, people look ahead to the European Championship in 2024, which will be played in their own country. Will the team regain its form under new coach Julian Nagelsmann (36) before then, or will it be yet another disappointment, this time in front of the home crowd?
The results of the 2014 world champion have been woefully poor in recent years. At the last two World Cups, the team was eliminated in the group stage (Qatar 2022 and Russia 2018), and at the 2020 European Championship the Germans were stranded in the eighth finals. National coach Hansi Flick, who succeeded Joachim Löw in 2021, was relieved of his position after a humiliating practice match against Japan (1-4) at the beginning of September after just two years.
Even though expectations were so high when Flick was appointed. In 2020 he won the Champions League with Bayern Munich, in 2014 Flick was assistant coach to Löw. Flick would breathe new life into Löw’s jaded methods. But according to his critics, Flick remained stuck in his urge for innovation during his two years with the German team. He tried a different line-up every match, eventually with fewer and fewer stars.
Flick has not publicly commented on his dismissal, but according to the tabloid Image after his defeat, he identified with Theodore Roosevelt, whom he quoted on his WhatsApp profile: “It’s not the critic who counts […] The credit goes to the man actually standing in the arena, his face smeared with dust, sweat and blood.”
The resurrection
The dismissal of national coach Flick may have been inevitable, but it has not solved the deeper problems with the German team. The 2014 World Cup, and especially the resounding victory over Brazil in the semi-finals (7-1), was considered the definitive confirmation of what Das Reboot has come to be called: the resurrection of German football after the disappointing elimination (last in the group) at the 2000 European Championship. Germany banned its long tradition of defensive football and became a pioneer in the development of an attacking playing style with high pressure .
It is that playing style, with the emphasis on technical, dynamic players, that is still leading in European club football in various variants. But the German team has repeatedly proven vulnerable since 2014, unable to defend the large spaces behind its own rearguard. Due to a lack of quality, perhaps, or because this form of attacking football requires a level of coordination that is difficult to instill in a national team that only meets occasionally and has regularly changing compositions.
The big question is how Flick’s successor, Julian Nagelsmann, will let the national team play, starting in a practice match this Saturday against the United States. Nagelsmann has long been regarded as an exponent of Das Reboot, a young, successful and innovative coach who puts pressure on the opponent as early as possible. But he has also suffered his first scratches; He had to leave Bayern Munich last April after a season and a half due to disappointing performances and dissatisfaction in the playing group.
At the age of 28, Nagelsmann started at Hoffenheim, which he first saved from relegation and two years later finished third in the Bundesliga and played in the group stage of the Champions League. With RB Leipzig, Nagelsmann then reached the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2020, but lost to Paris Saint-Germain under German coach Thomas Tuchel.
Finally, Nagelsmann only spent a short time at Bayern. He became national champion, of course, but remained unsuccessful in the Champions League. The club’s board negotiated with Tuchel while Nagelsmann was away on winter sports. When the club had parted ways with Tuchel, Nagelsmann had to read in the media that his time at Bayern was over.
Now Nagelsmann has to patch up the German team in the remaining eight months until the European Championship so that they progress beyond the group stage. An obvious disadvantage for Nagelsmann could be that a large part of the selection for the national team comes from Bayern Munich, and he has to regain the trust of those players. But perhaps Nagelsmann can also use the fact that he knows the Bayern players well to his advantage.
‘Zeitenwende’
The soothing words of technical director of the Football Association Rudi Völler (“it’s just football”) are an exception these days among football-loving Germans. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called the 2024 European Championship in Germany “the most important tournament of this decade”.
For tournament director and 2014 world champion Philipp Lahm, the European Championships must be much more than an important sporting event. In a submitted piece At the beginning of this month Lahm writes that he hopes for one ‘Zeitenwende’, a revolution. It is no coincidence that Lahm chose the term with which Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously announced the turnaround in German foreign and security policy after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Lahm wants the tournament to represent a “revolution” “for Europe, for society, for all of us.” The tournament should be a “call for solidarity and humanity, and strengthen the European idea.” Would Nagelsmann know what to do with that mission?
The players, at least, should not take Lahm’s order too seriously. In Qatar, the football association and the public debated for days whether the OneLove captain’s armband should be worn. When FIFA banned this, the football association quickly decided that the German team would have to be photographed with a hand over their mouth, as if they were being denied speech. The players reluctantly agreed. Most did not want to think too much about the political implications of the tournament but wanted to concentrate on their game. That could also be a good starting point for the summer of 2024.