There are very good reasons that speak against the fact that the national soccer team can win the European Championship next summer even without the helpless coach Hansi Flick, but there is also one that, despite everything, still speaks in favor of it: the players have the necessary talent.
And because that’s the most important thing in top-class sport, after this weekend you can say with good reason: With these players, Germany can become European champions!
Yes, from a sporting perspective, it must be noted that the Germans lack not only top skills but also special skills in some field positions: in full defense, in defensive midfield (probably the most important position in the modern game), in attack.
In the third place at the latest you would have to reply that Chelsea FC won the Champions League final against Manchester City and Pep Guardiola in the early summer of 2021 with a German storm duo: Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, who then also scored the game-winning 1-0 .
The talent is not lacking
This raises the question of why national coach Hansi Flick, like national coach Joachim Löw, failed to find a permanent place for the exceptional player Havertz, who, by the way, was so fond of this summer by Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta, a Guardiola student wanted his team.
And whoever becomes the next national coach will immediately have to ask themselves how they can put the ball artists Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz in the limelight with the ball in crucial places on the field.
No, it’s not the talent that is missing in Germany, but rather the managers and coaches who know what to do with this talent. One can make this diagnosis and at the same time admit that several players of this generation of German footballers can appear very fickle, that their commitment and energy sometimes change not just in a month or a week, but often even in a game, like that on Saturday could be observed at Kai Havertz. The next diagnosis can then be derived from this: These players need leadership!
This explicitly doesn’t mean a type of leadership that tells you what to do off the field, but one that says what you have to do on the field. In Manchester, the winger Leroy Sané, who in many ways represents his generation, took a big step because Pep Guardiola knew how to use him (“He’s the best player in the world when it comes to deep runs “). And yet it also says something about the challenge of this leadership that he didn’t protest much when Sané wanted to join FC Bayern.
In the national team, Hansi Flick’s players were not managed in these details as they should have been managed. And it made the problem insoluble for Flick that – unlike in Munich – he lacked the leaders among the players who could have helped him.
Daniel Theweleit Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 18 Christian Kamp Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 18 Tobias Rabe Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 15
You can’t blame the old national coach for that – and that’s what makes the new national coach’s job so complicated: he may not be able to change the players’ commitment. The way he wants to use them, however, does.
