Gelsenkirchen was a great choice of location for the German men’s national team to finish their season.
Despite the team’s poor form, a late kick off and a 2022/23 season that has lasted 11 months, Schalke’s home ground was nearly full for the visit of Colombia. The only problem was what Germany fans had to watch.
Oliver Fritsch of the Die Zeit weekly recently wrote that “this team isn’t of interest to many people anymore.” The attendance at Gelsenkirchen proved otherwise — even a group of protestors thought the match worth of storming. But the bigger problem is that for those who have stuck around, the viewing has been tough.
Luis Diaz’s superb header and a late penalty by Juan Cuadrado consigned Germany to another defeat, sealing a trio of games without a win this June. The loss to Colombia also means Germany have now won just three times in their last 11 games.
What the players had to say about the defeat to Colombia
And this defeat had the same shortcomings that have been visible in recent weeks and months. Misplaced passes, lacklustre build-up play, a lack of attacking bite — all storylines in what has become a very familiar tale for this Germany team.
“It is dramatic,” Leon Goretzka said bluntly afterwards. “Everything is missing.”
The performance was accompanied by audible groans, whistles and shouts of frustration from the home crowd. “What a load of crap,” screamed one fan as yet another attack failed.
“It’s hard to disagree,” said striker Niclas Füllkrug afterwards of the negative response. “We have few arguments against it [that we’re average].”
Pass, pass, pass — it only matters if there is something at the end of it, and for too much of the evening there wasn’t. That Füllkrug and Benjamin Henrichs’ bookings were met with a huge cheer of approval spoke volumes. This is what it has come to.
Player fatigue is understandable and shouldn’t be dismissed, but the issues surrounding this Germany team are not new. The rot is real and Germany can’t seem to find a way out.
Michael Jordan comparison looks a stretch
Hansi Flick has spent most of June defending his team, even going as far as suggesting captain Joshua Kimmich has the mentality of Michael Jordan. It seemed a remarkable comparison given Jordan is one of the most famous people — let alone athletes — on the planet and someone who developed a will-to-win mentality that ended in six NBA championships. Kimmich may have elements of the former, but he knows better than most, this generation is haunted by the absence of the latter.
While it is certainly part of Flick’s job to shield his team, both the performances and the results are making his statements increasingly harder to believe. How long can a team and a coach persist on a path before the time to change must come?
“It [Flick being fired] is not worth discussing,” said Henrichs. “We players need to take responsibility.”
The hope is that Germany do eventually turn the corner and things start to click, but next year’s European Championships on home soil currently look more to be a cause for concern than a football coronation.
Why are things going wrong for Germany?
The malaise set in with the defeat to Hungary last September. Flick’s experiments, either with a back three or, as against Colombia, with no real number nine and no Kimmich, don’t really looked to have made the team more flexible. A core group hasn’t emerged and Manchester City’s Ilkay Gündogan looks a different player in Germany colors than when he wears sky blue. As Christopher Meltzer wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently, “Flick is like a programmer who keeps getting the same error message.”
All of this is proving a little more than Rudi Völler expected as sporting director of the team. Völler, a former Germany striker, was brought in to steady the ship, smile for the cameras and subtly remind everyone of those classic German football values. Instead, Völler finds himself in a crisis he was not prepared for and both a team and an association struggling with the impact of a huge reduction in on-field success.
“I might have underestimated it at the start, but we don’t have the best quality,” Völler told broadcaster RTL afterwards. “At the end of the day, it’s a question of quality and one or the other players is short of the top level.”
The night before the Colombia game, Flick said outside the team hotel that it is “always something special to watch the national team play.” It should be, and perhaps this season makes it harder to know the real truth about this team, but in Gelsenkirchen the 50,421 fans that were not deterred by the late kick off or Germany’s poor form had it confirmed one last time before the summer. Behind the boos was the truth that watching this Germany team is just not as special as it used to be.
Edited by: Rob Turner
For all the latest Sports News Click Here
