As a novelist, Georges Simenon invented Inspector Maigret and claimed: “All you need for a good crime novel is a good beginning.” A clever national coach does the same.
3:1 against the USA.
Julian Nagelsmann could hardly have started more brilliantly. “The Germans still have a fantastic team,” the TV commentator for the US channel “TNT” marveled into his microphone on Saturday in the stands of the Pratt & Whitney Stadium in Hartford, but again would have been the more appropriate word. The Germans are alive again. They’re playing football again. And on the sidelines there is another national coach running up and down who keeps his word.
“We want to see active and attractive football,” Nagelsmann demanded, passionate football, football that makes you want more. And he saw him. And after the final whistle, he high-fived everyone who got in his way, some twice. Nagelsmann was happy and happy. And visibly relieved.
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Because a trip like this to the US can be a terrible disaster for a national coach who is just starting out, ask Erich Ribbeck. It happened to him in 1999, he was also fresh in office, there was also a European Championship finals just around the corner, and the DFB entourage quickly flew to hot, humid Florida in the middle of the season to meet there under the motto “Palm trees, Bad luck and bankruptcies” to wipe away the sweat of fear.
Erich Ribbeck on February 5, 1999 at a press conference in Jacksonville/USA – the day after, Germany lost 3-0 under the team boss
Quelle: picture-alliance/Sven Simon/SVEN SIMON
Ribbeck’s men lost 3-0 to the USA in Jacksonville, in one of the most outrageous games ever played by a German national football team, and afterwards the national coach, visibly confused, worked on a sentence that, as expected, failed under the circumstances: “It “It’s sometimes difficult,” said Ribbeck, “to convert words into language.” The sun smiled on Florida, the whole world laughed on Germany. “We want Berti!” was blasphemously painted on a bed sheet that was hanging on the balustrade on the back straight. Berti Vogts had just been released.
The relief was clear to see
Everything was as it is now. Except for the result. If Julian Nagelsmann had lost 3-0 on Saturday, no one would probably have shouted “We want Hansi!”, but the demand would have been louder: “We want Rudi!”
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Völler, the eternal folk hero and interim coach. After the final whistle, you could see how happy and happy the DFB sports director was that Nagelsmann’s debut was so “totally positive” and that he “conveyed everything so wonderfully”. Both are suddenly off the hook, the doubts and complaining are over, the promising victory in Hartford even supplants the Bundesliga’s fuss about this US trip, which makes many people shake their heads and think back to Berti Vogts, the most travel-loving national coach of all time.
Once, in 1993, Vogts, feared as the “Cosmopolitan of Korschenbroich,” fulfilled his wildest dreams shortly before Christmas Eve. The DFB Advent ordeal at the time – breakfast in Miami, lunch in San Francisco, dinner in Mexico City – went down in the Guinness Book of Records because Berti flew his DFB players 25,000 kilometers around the world for three friendly games within ten days Every day they broke through new climate and time zones and passed the bed test in various top hostels in the world. The grass test was even mentioned as an important part of the trip. “The American ball,” captain Lothar Matthäus and goalkeeper Andy Köpke recognized in unison at the time, “is softer, the ground is harder.” Different countries, different air pressure.
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Since Saturday we finally know how hard the ball bounces in Hartford, Connecticut. But above all the victory was extremely important because it smoothed things over, and Nagelsmann now finds it easier when he says to the end of the trip: “We should use the time responsibly and deal with it positively.”
Jamal Musiala (M.) impressed in the DFB team’s international match against the USA. He scored a goal in the 3-1 win
Quelle: Getty Images via AFP/ALEX GRIMM
The 3-1 and the way the German team dominated the game and the young, fast and talented US boys, especially in the second half, took Nagelsmann’s sharpest headwind from the skeptics off his face. He is not a folk hero and not a Ruuuudi, in recent surveys more than 50 percent thought he was the wrong national coach. Anyone who worked in Hoffenheim, Leipzig and FC Bayern won’t win any popularity prizes. For some he is too elitist, for others he is too clever, for others he is too fashionable, and for others he thinks that in the national team’s crisis it was not a young Stenz, but a seasoned man who was needed to arrest the opponents.
The wisdom of Horst Tappert
Horst Tappert once explained this well. The actor served until his old age as Chief Inspector Derrick in the ZDF crime-fighting murder squad and handled even his trickiest cases with calm and routine and without unnecessary shedding of sweat. In the end, the murderer, always mentally worn out, knocked on Derrick’s door, put the murder weapon on the table and gave up without a word. The writer here once interviewed Tappert for the TV magazine “Hörzu” and he said: “In America they would rather put 72-year-old Robert Mitchum in front of the camera than two 36-year-olds.”
Julian Nagelsmann (m.) in conversation with his assistant coaches Sandro Wagner (l.) and Benjamin Glück
Quelle: Getty Images via AFP/ALEX GRIMM
Many football fans would have wished for this solution recently after the dismissal of Hansi Flick. For example, Felix Magath or the 72-year-old Louis van Gaal were discussed as successors, but instead the DFB preferred two 36-year-olds – Julian Nagelsmann and Sandro Wagner. Benjamin Glück, the other assistant coach, is also only 37, but this DFB coaching team, no longer only believes left forward Robin Gosens, is the best: “The three of them have fire. They can set a team on fire with their passion.” And if the fire gets out of hand, Wagner, who is responsible for the lawn sprinklers on the training ground, has to put it out quickly.
In any case, the first impression is that Nagelsmann has that certain something, but definitely stands out from many others who have that certain nothing. Rudi Völler calls it a stroke of luck and is extremely happy about this decision by the football gods, because: “The most important thing is that as a national coach you start straight away with a really good game.”
If Julian Nagelsmann gets his act together again on Tuesday when it comes to the national team’s turning point and completes the double whammy in Philadelphia against Mexico, historians will later say: This US trip somehow had a greater meaning.
