Flick after first defeat as national coach – “That opened our eyes”
| Reading time: 3 minutes
After the bankruptcy against Hungary, the national coach and his players find clear words for the poor performance. While Thomas Müller cites the problems of individual professionals in the club as a possible cause, Hansi Flick sees an experiment as a failure.
IAfter the end of the game, the German protagonists were unerring. Without beating around the bush and to the point, they described everything that had gone wrong in the previous 95 minutes of the game (including stoppage time).
The German national players all reacted with great disappointment to their poor performance in the 0: 1 (0: 1) in the Nations League against Hungary. “In the first half we didn’t happen at all, we missed everything,” said Joshua Kimmich on ZDF. His Bayern team-mate Thomas Müller said that the problems of “many” players in their Bundesliga clubs could be seen during the performance in Leipzig. “It was also the case that we sometimes made mistakes that were unavoidable, which affected almost all players,” said Müller, who represented Manuel Neuer, who was infected with Corona, as captain.
In the second half, “many things were significantly better”, “but of course the 0-1 is in the books now, and we have to put up with the criticism,” said Müller. Due to the bankruptcy, for which the former Bundesliga professional Adam Szalai caused a goal worth seeing with a hoe (17th), Germany can no longer win the Nations League group, but at least it can because of the 0: 1 of the English in Italy in the parallel game don’t get off anymore.
“There will be many reports”
“We’re relatively without arguments, but the coaching team and we as a team stand together,” said Müller. “We know about the situation, there will be many reports. But we have to go above and beyond that and continue to pursue the concept that the coach specifies.”
Midfielder Jonas Hofmann said: “That must be a lesson for us. That was just not enough for the most part today. The first half really sucked,” said the man from Mönchengladbach. “The defeat doesn’t knock us out as a team, we’re going on our way. It’s annoying today and it hurts, but we won’t let that get us down and we want to show a reaction and an improvement in performance against England.” The DFB team will play at Wembley next Monday.
National coach Hansi Flick also justified his team’s poor performance with a tactical experiment: “We wanted to try something with Jonas Hofmann on the right-back position, I have to take responsibility for that a bit,” explained Flick in the ZDF interview. He wanted to tackle the game with two attacking full-backs. “We never got where we wanted to use them, that didn’t work,” said the national coach, who made the switch in the second half when Thilo Kehrer came on. Hofmann went more on the offensive again.
“The defeat doesn’t knock us down, we know what it’s about,” said Flick. “That opened our eyes.” His team played a “very bad first half” and “without self-confidence”. “We tried everything in the second half, unfortunately it didn’t work out,” said Flick two months before the first game at the World Cup in Qatar against Japan.
“No,” he’s not worried, the coach said. “It’s just that games like this happen sometimes – better now than in November. The team has been woken up and I think that will do them good.”