National coach Julian Nagelsmann is particularly skeptical about the DFB team’s defense.
Photo: imago/Ulises Naranjo
There are still seven months until the European Championship kicks off. The pressure is already noticeable. The official playground equipment was presented in Berlin on Wednesday. The “Football Love”, as the ball is called, can now go into production. The German Football Association would also like to create such passion more easily. And the crisis-plagued DFB is betting everything on the home tournament next summer. The major event must be a great success after years of decline.
The easiest and fastest way back into people’s hearts is victories on the football field. Julian Nagelsmann has been responsible for this for three months. This Saturday, the national coach makes his home debut; he and his DFB team will face the Turkish national team in the Berlin Olympic Stadium. Of all places, where the final of the European Championship will be played on July 14th. And also this: “I want to play in this stadium because the final is here,” said Manuel Neuer on Wednesday. The FC Bayern goalkeeper, who was back in action, was the first to hold the “Football Love” in his hands when the match ball was presented. He is not yet in the national team squad, but in the glare of the European Cup, he immediately announced his “big goal”: “We want to create positive emotions in our country together with the fans.”
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Julian Nagelsmann takes the general conditions as an incentive; after leaving FC Bayern, he too has to prove himself again. And he is looking forward to the “emotionality” of the game against Turkey in front of more than 70,000 spectators: “It will be very, very loud. There will be a lot of Turkish fans there.” After all, the national coach has enough to worry about. “Our construction site is stable defense, we want to achieve that now,” he explained. This was a particular training focus during the preparation days on the DFB campus in Frankfurt am Main. Since Wednesday, the national players have also been able to get to know the “love of football” there.
The game in Berlin will show how much the defensive practice work achieved. The Turkish footballers are leading their Group D in the European Championship qualifiers ahead of Wales and Croatia, who came third in the World Cup. The same applies to the opponent next Tuesday in Vienna: Coach Ralf Rangnick has led Austria to first place in Group F, ahead of the strong Belgians. Nothing was known about the national coach’s findings from the last days of training; he only reported on it on Friday evening at the official press conference for the international match.
The national coach left the media stage in Frankfurt to the players. One person didn’t show up, the captain of all people. İlkay Gündoğan, to whom Nagelsmann entrusted Neuer’s armband, deliberately avoids the public before the game against the national team from his parents’ country. On the one hand, there are the memories of the scandal surrounding the joint photo of İlkay Gündoğan and Mesut Özil with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in May 2018 – shortly before the elections in Turkey and the World Cup in Russia. And danger is lurking just outside the front door. When the national team landed in Berlin on Friday afternoon, Erdoğan was already in the city. Numerous demonstrations were registered to accompany the Turkish president’s state visit. And before his arrival, Erdoğan himself made sure that it wasn’t just about the oppression of the Kurds by accusing Israel of “state terrorism” in connection with the Middle East conflict and also questioning the country’s legitimacy.
“Sport can’t hide from this,” said DFB sports director Rudi Völler. If only he hadn’t continued talking. The completely vague and helpless-sounding formulation that one would always try to show a certain attitude was followed by the clumsy advice to “read into things a little” in order to understand what it was about. In any case, everyone was relieved that Erdoğan did not want to attend the game in Berlin. The security precautions around the Olympic Stadium still exceed any normal level.
The meeting of football and politics is in a way a test run for next year’s European Championship. The national coach has much less time than the tournament organizers. After the two international matches against Turkey and Austria, the national team will not meet again until March. And Julian Nagelsmann has only had two games as national coach. During the trip to the USA in October, the German footballers won 3-1 against the hosts, but at least they didn’t lose in the 2-2 draw against Mexico. But despite the slightly improved performances, the basic problem that has been bothersome for years has not been solved. Midfielder Leon Goretzka put it this way: »It’s still too easy to score goals against us. Everyone is aware that defense is the key to success in tournaments. And the DFB in particular needs this success.
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