Hansi Flick acknowledged the final whistle with a shake of his head. It didn’t last much longer than the flapping of a hummingbird’s wings, but probably said more about the national coach’s condition than the benevolent discussions that he later extensively disseminated to the television audience and reporters. When the Spanish referee blew the final whistle, Flick’s hopes that there could be more than the 1-1 that was on the scoreboard were over.
Again: 1-1 in Amsterdam after the match against the Netherlands, 1-1 on Saturday evening in Bologna after meeting Italy, 1-1 in the game against England in Munich. You don’t have to be a detective to conclude that this series can’t be a coincidence.
While Flick couldn’t avoid a spontaneous critical facial expression, his colleague Gareth Southgate was delighted. England’s national coach undertook his extensive handshake tour with the members of the German coaching staff (he even paid his respects to the DFB press officer) not only for reasons of sporting fairness. He was also relieved that his opponent had let his exhausted team get away with a draw after all. The 1-1 draw was a good result for Southgate. But for the Germans?
Flick brought movement – the squad reacted dynamically and lively
Faced with the choice of whether he would rather be happy about his goal or quarrel with the outcome of the game, Jonas Hofmann didn’t find it difficult to decide: he prefers quarreling, said the Mönchengladbach attacker, who defeated the German team in the 51st minute had taken the lead. Looking back, he had a lot of good things to say, but he couldn’t ignore one key fact: “Maybe it was a small flaw that we only scored one goal.”
The national coach had changed seven players compared to the previous appearance, but he was not able to substitute a goalscorer. There is no need to hunt for the man who reliably converts crosses into hits and suddenly magically is there for the dust collector. With every 1-1 draw, the absence of the classic specialist becomes more urgent. Kai Havertz earned his merit as a backup striker on Tuesday, but he didn’t have a real chance to score.
Should ensure that the structure’s statics are guaranteed: Antonio Rüdiger can see this as a further upgrade of his status.
(Photo: Sascha Walther/Eibner/Imago)
Flick’s big exchange was on the one hand a rational maneuver that seems necessary given the high rhythm of this series of international matches, and on the other hand a measure that could be understood as an educational gesture to some of the established players.
In Italy it wasn’t just mood-dependent players like Serge Gnabry or Leroy Sané who lacked the necessary determination. And so Flick landed a stage victory on Tuesday, at least from an educational point of view. He succeeded in staging the competition. He brought movement to the squad with a powerful shake, and the squad responded dynamically and lively. The audience felt well entertained, FC Bayern would like to see so much sympathy in the stands more often. “Today’s game was how we planned it. The way it was played was just great for the fans,” Flick was able to state.
Flick will have to endure and moderate increased dissatisfaction in the squad
The choice of the remaining four – Manuel Neuer, Antonio Rüdiger, Joshua Kimmich and Thomas Müller – was based on structural considerations. This quartet should guarantee the structure’s statics. Rüdiger in particular can see this as a further upgrade of his status. His price gain on the football stock exchange has brought him a contract with Real Madrid, and he is now one of the core team in the national team.
Nico Schlotterbeck looked like a kind of junior partner at his side. While the Freiburg defender dared to enter the opposing half and sometimes lost the ball along with it, Rüdiger kept a responsible watch. We don’t yet know what the German defense will look like at the World Cup in Qatar, but at least we know that Rüdiger will be at the center of it.
Schlotterbeck will have to match his future Dortmund team-mate Niklas Süle if he wants to land the next-man role and he appeared unconvinced on Tuesday that he had picked up points. The fact that he conceded the penalty shortly before the end, which Harry Kane used to equalize, was more the result of an accident than misconduct. But as guilty as Schlotterbeck later refused to comment (“Absolutely not!”), he will still not have rested well.
If he sees the spectrum of his possibilities, then Flick should notice that five months before the start of the World Cup he is increasingly reaching sensitive limits. In his second year in office, he will have to endure and moderate increasing dissatisfaction in the squad. Ilkay Gündogan, for example, got the central spot against England, which he claims is by no means unjustified, but even the well-deserved special applause when he was substituted did not comfort him. Gundogan was the man who structured the German game, carried it and gave it a very handsome dose of tiki-taka, but eventually went home grumpy anyway.
It was about the lost win and it was about himself for not being able to play through again, oddly enough he had to make room for Leroy Sané in the 83rd minute. In his opinion, both were related, but he only put that on record as an encrypted message because he knows what’s appropriate: “We have to be cooler, hold the ball better, buy a little time,” Gündogan said, as if he had missed himself in those last few minutes. A ripped-off win against a class team like England “may have been the development step” that the team needs, he then admitted, and he is undoubtedly right about that: Flick’s national team is making progress – and at the same time is on the spot.
