Oliver Bierhoff and Joachim Löw: A relationship is crumbling

Actually, the case should have been closed by Tuesday evening. Oliver Bierhoff, director of the national team at the DFB and the manager of the national coach, stood in front of the ARD television camera immediately after the 6-0 fiasco in Seville against Spain and spoke the sentence: “The trust in Joachim Löw is there, and that changes even this game nothing. “

But it’s not that simple after all.

Bierhoff also has a boss at the DFB with President Fritz Keller, and the impact of public opinion that has been affecting the association and the national team since Tuesday evening is enormous. Keller, who defended the direction the team had taken in his official statement on Wednesday, but did not mention the coach by name, is initially playing for time: Löw is to present an analysis of the situation in the DFB flagship team by December 4th. He is not supposed to present them to the Presidium himself, Bierhoff should do this instead – a subtle reference to the hierarchies at the DFB.

The manager becomes something like the trainer-decision-maker. If his presentation on December 4th is convincing, Löw’s departure, the unlikely option anyway, is off the table for now. Bierhoff has been with the association long enough to know what depends on him. And he has sensed the sensitivity that the time seems to have come to loosen the connection with the national coach a little so that the fate of Löw is not linked to the fate of Bierhoff in a Siamese way.

Is Bierhoff slowly separating himself from Löw?

In these confusing days at the DFB, the relationship between coach and manager is also ambivalent. On the one hand there is the pledge of loyalty on the evening of Seville, on the other hand Bierhoff had started a discussion about Löw’s position through an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the week before.

In the »FAZ« Bierhoff had said: »The path that the national coach has taken, I’ll go with you up to and including the EM.« A harmless sentence, but one with barbs. Afterwards he was interpreted as if the DFB director was already thinking out loud about a time without Löw after the EM. The sentence is said to have been deliberately placed in the interview, as can be heard around the DFB. It was before the 0: 6, but this monstrous defeat gave Bierhoff’s quote an even greater impact. In the Löw camp they know that this statement harmed the national coach, and they wonder why Bierhoff made it.

Bierhoff and Löw – this is a working relationship that has now lasted 16 years. Sometimes it looked like an old married couple in the end, coordinated, but run-in and also with problems. Bierhoff’s choice of the 2018 World Cup location near Moscow offended Löw. He wanted to go to the Black Sea in Sochi, where the year before he had found the best conditions for a successful tournament at the Confed Cup. If you ask around in Löw’s environment, the case is still added.

“We know each other inside and out,” Löw had said about Bierhoff the previous week when he was asked about his statements. The division of roles between the two was always clear: Bierhoff, the salesman, Löw, who was not interested in the whole thing. That went well for a long time, Bierhoff rarely talked Löw into sport, but Löw Bierhoff not into business. Against the background of the second serious crisis within two and a half years, the Löw-Bierhoff rope team is also facing an acid test.

Bierhoff’s course rejected by many fans

The criticism of the national team in the past few years has never been just sporting. When it comes to Löw, there has been a certain boredom among the public. The sporting record since the miserable World Cup in Russia is not so bad that the harsh criticism that has been pouring over him since Tuesday actually has a basis in this form.

The DFB selection has played 24 games since Russia. There were four defeats (against France, Spain and twice against Holland), twelve wins and eight draws. This puts Germany well behind Belgium, France and Portugal, but roughly on a par with Spain, England and the Netherlands (here is an overview).

Germany in upheaval is an upper-middle-class team. No more, but no less either.

The criticism of Bierhoff, on the other hand, is more fundamental. It’s heading towards commercialization, marketing, overselling. All the things that fundamentally annoy many fans about today’s top football are tied to his person and what he does. In a way, Löw now has to pay for the criticism of commercialization that Bierhoff pushed.

That didn’t bother the association for a long time. Bierhoff was a blessing for the DFB on many levels. He opened up new sources of money, found sponsors, he combined economic and sporting expertise. After the difficult early years, in which Bierhoff’s way offended many in the old DFB, he has now developed a position and a wealth of power that you can no longer get past him.

There are currently public calls for resignation from Bierhoff, but according to SPIEGEL information, this is not seriously an issue at all within the association. The only criticism behind the scenes is that Bierhoff, given his full range of tasks in the association – among other things, Bierhoff is responsible for the new academy, which has been praised as a flagship project for years – let the attention of the national team drag. That should change again now. The national team is more important than the academy right now.

Meanwhile, the national coach is doing what he often did after setbacks. Joachim Löw, it is said, has gone underground for the time being. But he will have to go to a retreat with Bierhoff by December 4th. Both have to work out a coherent concept to overcome the current crisis in the national team.

Bierhoff and Löw joined the DFB in 2004 when Jürgen Klinsmann took up the job as national coach. It is now possible that they will not go together.