National soccer team: These are Nagelsmann’s construction sites

What Julian Nagelsmann needs to work on so that his mission with the national team next summer can be successful can be broken down into five areas.

attack

Scoring a goal is not just the movement of the ball into the net, but also always: a sound. And in the case of Niclas Füllkrug, it sounded good, full and full, as he scored one hit after another on Tuesday in Foxborough at the end of the first training session of the USA trip. Füllkrug is in shape, and even if in this case there is no sound associated with it: the term body language could have been invented for him.

Hardly anyone else moves across the pitch with such self-confidence and full of positive energy. The question, however, is: What if the filling jug is out of shape? Julian Nagelsmann is not an absolutist when it comes to a so-called real nine in his team. He likes to have one, of course, but he also advocates the theory of flow, which says: If a striker isn’t in good shape, it might be better for the attacking midfielders to try to provide the music. In Munich he went so far as to declare the world’s top goalscorer expendable, although this had nothing to do with his flow – and in the end it turned out to be a bad idea.

Füllkrug is certainly not the world’s best striker, but it would be best for Nagelsmann and the Germans if he continued at his new club in Dortmund where he left off in Bremen. There is only one thing that shouldn’t happen again after the World Cup in Qatar: a jug in the river and a coach who doesn’t hear the shot.

Tor

K-issues could be discussed again in Germany in the coming weeks and months. And if that happens in both politics and sport, people will look to Munich. To Markus Söder, the shadow chancellor candidate. And to Manuel Neuer, the shadow captain.

Now that the new national coach Julian Nagelsmann is in the USA with the German national soccer team for preparation, goalkeeper Manuel Neuer is getting ready for his return on Säbener Strasse in Munich. He wants to play for FC Bayern in the Bundesliga this month for the first time since breaking his lower leg in December 2022. And what if he helped decide the top game in Dortmund on November 4th (6.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky) with a typical Neuer action?

Everyone who doubted Neuer (even more) since the 2022 World Cup at least had to admit that FC Bayern missed him more than they probably thought. But unlike in January, when he was still coach in Munich, Nagelsmann has other options. He doesn’t have to replace Neuer with Sven Ulreich or Yann Sommer, he has Marc-André ter Stegen, FC Barcelona’s starting goalkeeper.

From a sporting perspective, it hardly seems necessary to bring Neuer back at the moment – and with him there is also a conflict: In Munich, Nagelsmann had the goalkeeping coach Toni Tapalović removed, which made Neuer angry. On the K question, the coach has already decided on Ilkay Gündogan. And so it could be that, at least in the Manuel Neuer case, the shadow debate is just a sham debate.

hierarchy

It is interesting that the possibly decisive reason why Hansi Flick became national coach and why he was no longer allowed to remain national coach is the same: hierarchy. In his 19 months with FC Bayern Munich, in which he also became a majority coach for the national soccer team as a seven-title coach, Flick laid the foundations in this regard in the first few weeks.

Newcomer: Chris Führich (right) tries to stop Jamal Musiala. : Image: AFP

At that time, he not only gave some of his players a new position, but also a new role – which is why German World Cup captain Philipp Lahm later wrote: “Hansi Flick managed to establish the valid hierarchy in the team with just a few changes.” But it speaks for Flick’s failure in the matter that Lahm now said in the “Bild am Sonntag” with a view to the most pressing tasks of the new national coach Julian Nagelsmann: “He has to find a core, a team in which a hierarchy develops. “