Sports national coach
Goretzka’s plea for Nagelsmann
As of: 2:19 p.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes
Leon Goretzka scored against Leverkusen and then campaigned for his former coach as national coach. Julian Nagelsmann is “a great coach”. Uli Hoeneß also thinks the candidate is suitable and compares him with the Emperor of China.
In the top Bundesliga game against Bayer Leverkusen, Leon Goretzka scored to make it 2-1 for FC Bayern. A sporting answer after the midfielder was recently ignored by the national team. But the topic of DFB selection is by no means over for the 28-year-old. Quite the opposite.
Goretzka has a clear opinion about the future of the national team and would welcome another collaboration with former coach Julian Nagelsmann. “I think Julian is a great coach. If he ends up being that, I think we have a great coach,” he said after the duel with Leverkusen.
Nagelsmann, who had to leave the German record champions in the spring, is considered a hot candidate to succeed Hansi Flick as national coach. The 58-year-old was released by the DFB after the 4-1 defeat in the international match against Japan in Wolfsburg a week ago. In the 2-1 win against runner-up world champion France on Tuesday in Dortmund, DFB sports director Rudi Völler (63) acted as interim team boss, but he wants it to be understood as a “one-off thing”.
Answer on the pitch: Leon Goretzka scored against Leverkusen after being ignored by the DFB
Source: AFP/CHRISTOF STACHE
Hoeneß and the Emperor of China
Goretzka regretted replacing Flick, who had not nominated him for the first international matches of the European Championship year. His resignation also surprised him. “A coach’s dismissal is always a sign that you haven’t done your job well. “So of course I was sad and annoyed that it had come to this,” said Goretzka.
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The 53-time national player won the treble with Flick at FC Bayern in 2020. “We had a successful time with Hansi. I would have liked it to work better for him,” said Goretzka, referring to the national team.
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The DFB team will travel to the USA in October with test matches against the US team in Hartford and against Mexico in Philadelphia. By then, the association wants to have found a new national coach if possible. Goretzka’s goal is to be part of the DFB squad again.
Like Goretzka, his honorary president at FC Bayern, Uli Hoeneß, would “basically trust” former Munich coach Julian Nagelsmann to take on the job as national coach. But one thing is “also clear,” said Hoeneß in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”: “The DFB could now bring in the Emperor of China, and he would also have a hard time.”
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The 71-year-old spoke of a “misery” that was due to a number of things “that a national coach cannot fix at the push of a button.” The former national player mentioned the leadership crises in the German Football Association in recent years, problems with young talent and a lack of competition. “We have a team where the fans often have the feeling that some people don’t have as much awareness of playing for their own country as Argentina or Morocco,” said Hoeneß.
