Dhe worst realization after this repeated short appearance at a World Cup someone will have to teach DFB managing director Oliver Bierhoff gently: The campfire is out, there is not even a spark of embers left in the ashes. Finally, the unthinkable happened. This does not mean the elimination – but the reaction to it.
A little shake of the head, a few shrugs, a little gossip with friends, otherwise Germany goes about business as usual. There are also more important things – you still have to do the Christmas shopping.
(Men’s) football has well earned this loss of relevance, initiated in the days of Vatutinki 2018, continued with the complaints in Corona days of how badly this pandemic is affecting professional football, and now perfected with the next crashing failure. He has to endure a completely different setback: 17.43 million turned on the television for the game against Costa Rica – 17.9 million, however, for the women’s European Championship final against England in midsummer.
And the second worst realization? Nothing has improved, although Joachim Löw is no longer there. And you don’t even know which finding is more surprising. All in all, a good team is better than adding up the individual qualities of the players. It’s the job of the coach to tease that out of his squad, to pour it all into a system that makes everyone better.
The fact that Löw failed in 2018 was attributed to his hubris, that after winning the 2014 World Cup he could now walk on water and saw himself as a visionary. Despite so much foresight, he went to Russia with a squad that had too many construction sites.
Four years later, Hansi Flick managed to repeat this cardinal mistake, maybe even topping it. The urgently overdue change of coach brought a breath of fresh air, but not a lasting change.
The six titles he’s won in his short tenure as Bayern coach suggests he has a clear plan for getting the best out of a squad, for managing all the ribbed egos of pampered pro footballers into one common goal to one.
But neither of these happened. Germany went to a World Cup with even more construction sites than four years ago, apparently only then realized that the preparation time was very short, had no scaffolding and was still looking for the right line-up on site, probably provided four right-backs in three games for a World Cup record.
Flick preached courage and didn’t have one himself – this led to us seeing a team that didn’t exude anything that, unlike the performances of women’s football in the summer, left us oddly apathetic. But at least there is an upward trend: four years ago Germany was last in the group.
