Comment on the DFB-Elf at the EM 2021: This end changes everything

The German national team was the English opponent in fear. Til today. Now the British have fought back with full force, sent the DFB-Elf into one of the biggest crises and coach Löw with a bitter defeat for the time being retired.

WHAT A DRAMA. WHAT A SHOCK. WHAT A DISASTER.

Germany is out of the European Championship. Against arch rivals England. With 0: 2 in the round of 16.

The national team had won every knockout game against England in the past 55 years. Every single one since the Englishman’s only world title in 1966.

A quarter of a century had not only benefited German football fans from the 1996 European Championship. About the semi-final win on penalties. From winning the title in the final against the Czech Republic. At Wembley Stadium in London. About the tragedy of today’s England coach Gareth Southgate, who missed the decisive penalty back then and still says today: “I carried that around with me for more than 20 years.”

For more than 30 years, German football has been proud of the statement made by Gary Lineker after the Englishmen left the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup after a penalty shoot-out. “Football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and in the end the Germans always win,” said the frustrated striker at the time.

Or the last duel in the last sixteen of the 2010 World Cup: Germany won 4-1. Everything was fine with that – until today.

Incredible: England had never won a game in the knockout phase in regular time at a European Championship.

Now. This game changes everything.

Did the German team resist? Yes. Did she fight? Absolutely. But she was helpless. A German national team is not allowed to appear like this. Not in a round of 16. Not against England.

The defeat is a disaster. And: yes, German football is down.

• For the first time, Germany did not make it to the quarter-finals in two consecutive tournaments – despite five world champions and eleven Champions League winners in the EM squad.
• In the Nations League, only one Uefa innovation saved the national team from relegation.
• In world football nobody trembles in front of Germany after the preliminary round at the 2018 World Cup, the 0: 6 against Spain or the 1: 2 against North Macedonia.
• Even the English have overcome their trauma – after more than half a century.

The Joachim Löw era ended at a low point after 15 years. The world champion coach has shrunk to normal. If he hadn’t already announced his departure, the DFB would (have to) chase him from the court. Despite all the merits.

Löw made Germany the world champion – and then tore down his monument himself. The end of 2018 was on his cap because he slept through any development in European football. The upheaval without Jérôme Boateng, Thomas Müller and Mats Hummels went completely wrong – the return campaign by Müller and Hummels came much too late.

Löw leaves a large construction site to his successor, Hansi Flick. And the whole country the scorn and ridicule of the English – possibly for the next 55 years.