Joachim Löw looked after the German national team from 2006 to 2021. Image: dpa / Christian Charisius
Sport
In 2018, the German national team said goodbye after the World Cup group phase, in 2021 it ended in the European Championship round of 16 and in 2022 it was eliminated again from the World Cup after the group games. In recent years, German football has maneuvered itself into a crisis.
The downward trend began under Joachim Löw, Hansi Flick couldn’t stop it, now Julian Nagelsmann, the third national coach in three years, is supposed to bring about a turnaround. Almost eight months before the start of the home European Championships, it seems like a Herculean task.
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“Anyone who thinks that Nagelsmann will come and solve the fundamental problems of German football is seriously mistaken.”said Joachim Löw in the podcast “Spielmacher – The EM Talk with Sebastian Hellmann and 360Media”. But the world champion coach did not want to see this as criticism of his successor.
Joachim Löw: Problems in German football lie deeper
The 63-year-old thinks highly of the new national coach, but the problems lie deeper: “He can do something positive for the European Championships or the next few years. But if German football continues like this, it will no longer be at the top of the world for years be.”
Julian Nagelsmann will look after the German national team until the European Championships.Image: dpa / Jörg Halisch
Löw deliberately spoke about German football, not the DFB. “The DFB is not solely responsible. Clubs provide the training, clubs provide the content. Clubs hire their coaches. “We have deficits,” he says, saying that the clubs are primarily responsible. As a result, one shouldn’t “project everything that’s going badly onto the DFB.”
So you have to start with the clubs – and the world champion coach has clear ideas about this. “We have to focus primarily on further training,” he demanded, adding an explanation at the same time: “Players come to the pros at the age of 18 and are highly talented. From my experience, I could name a few players who were very good at 18 or 19 – at the age of 23 but at the same or even worse level. That’s worrying for me. That’s the system error.”
According to Löw, in Germany there is too much focus on team tactical training. “That’s also important, but the progress is in the individualization of the individual positions. We have to get better at that. At the very bottom of your training, but especially between the ages of 18 and 23. It shouldn’t stop there, that’s where it really begins!”
The former national coach therefore calls for specific units for individual players that are precisely coordinated with the coaching team. He sees a lever there to be more successful again in the long term. Looking back, however, annoys him.
German virtues: Joachim Löw talks himself into a rage
“I can’t hear it anymore when coaches and so-called experts always come up with the ‘German virtues’,” complained Löw. The call for fighting spirit, commitment and passion is a fatal message to everyone. “If anyone thinks that German virtues can win games today, they are very much mistaken. I hear that far too often,” said Löw.
For the DFB teams and the Bundesliga clubs, it is important to win the games “through playful accents”: “We in Germany have to make tactical and technical progress, we have failed to do that. That’s where we have to start. That’s the content.”
In 2014, Joachim Löw (m.) and his coaching team ensured the DFB team’s last major success. Image: GES/DFB/Pool / Markus Gilliar
Because only smaller nations could fight, Löw talked about the basics in this regard and made an interesting comparison: “Someone once said that to become a math professor you have to know the multiplication tables.”
But he hardly had to talk to his professionals about commitment, willingness to run or fighting spirit, because for them it was also the basis on which they developed into seasoned football professionals.
Löw also goes against the grain of the fact that individual players are repeatedly denied the opportunity to play based on the virtues mentioned. “The national players have come this far because they have had assertiveness over the years. If anyone believes that these players don’t show enough commitment or fighting spirit, they are very much mistaken,” he found clear words.
He added a small dig at unnamed ex-professionals: “Today’s players – Toni Rüdiger, Jo Kimmich, İlkay Gündoğan, I could name many – tailor their entire daily routine to football. They are professionals through and through. And completely different to the players 15, 20 years ago. They always want to win. But they need solutions other than ‘you have to fight more’.”
It remains to be seen whether this old-fashioned phrase will disappear from football reporting in the coming months. But it could definitely be good for the development of the German game – and Joachim Löw’s blood pressure anyway.
There were two main topics in FC Bayern’s 4-0 win in the first round of the DFB Cup against Preußen Münster: the serious injury to Serge Gnabry, who broke his left forearm, and the need in central defense, where Leon Goretzka had to help out due to several failures.
2023-10-05 13:39:41
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