Nineteen years after resigning in the wake of a disastrous Euro 2004, Rudi Voller will return as the German men’s head coach against France on Tuesday evening. Since the new caretaker boss first left, Die Nationalmannschaft has undergone root-and-branch reform, hosted one World Cup and won another, before suffering a steady yet seemingly inexorable decline and fall.
This national degeneration, traceable from their Euro 2016 semi-final defeat to Sunday’s sacking of Hansi Flick, has been as stark as it has alienating. Flick is the first German manager ever to be sacked outright, with the decision coming less than 24 hours after a chastening 4-1 defeat to Japan. Having won his first eight games upon succeeding Joachim Low, he managed only another four victories in the next 17 matches.
Managerial exits are supposed to hail cathartic release and renewed optimism, yet Flick’s sacking has inspired nothing of the sort. A Der Spiegel column on Sunday was headlined “It can only get better. Or can it?” It continued: “[DFB President Bernd] Neuendorf has said we need a spirit of optimism and confidence before the European Championship in our own country. If this is actually achieved, it would probably be the most miraculous masterclass in the history of the DFB.”
A similar piece in FAZ read: “The national team has reached a new nadir. It would be good if the DFB had a plan, but it hasn’t given that impression for some time now.”
There is an overwhelming sense of submissive helplessness around the German national set-up, from the fans and media to the boardroom and playing corps. At no point in the Flick era was this clearer than Japan’s third goal in the 4-1 defeat.
Triggered by a slip from Robin Gosens, last man Antonio Rudiger simply watched Takefusa Kubo run 50 yards to set up Takuma Asano. It was an act of pure resignation, indicative of either a lack of respect for and dedication to his teammates and manager or a belief there was simply no point in trying any more. That a fourth goal followed less than two minutes later was wholly unsurprising.
Through either comically perfect or sadistically cruel timing, Amazon released their All or Nothing documentary about Germany’s disastrous 2022 World Cup campaign two days before Flick’s sacking. It showed the former Bayern midfielder to be an ineffective and uninspiring communicator, suffering from a similar dearth of conviction or charisma to his players. From the day he was hired, awkwardly sipping champagne in a corner, looking as though he would rather be anywhere else, Flick, despite his overawing club success, seemed an uncomfortable fit.
The documentary did little more for the few players it followed in-depth. Joshua Kimmich, stripped of the captaincy last week for Ilkay Gundogan, appeared arrogant and inflexible, involved in both major conflicts of the series. He even admitted “I wouldn’t want a team of 11 Kimmiches”. Meanwhile, Leon Goretzka seemed exceedingly dull, a concerningly common affliction across the squad.
More than anything, All or Nothing exposed a lack of coherent philosophy and team identity which was inherited from the latter Low years and has never been resolved. In the week before his sacking, Flick announced his side were being taught “a new philosophy of play”. What that was, we’ll never know.
Largely, this is the result of a growing talent crisis within German football. Despite winning the U21 Euros in both 2017 and 2021, those victories have not produced the plethora of senior talent you would expect.
Of the 46 players across both squads, four have made more than seven national appearances, with only Serge Gnabry an unmitigated success. The average age of Flick’s final squad was 28, while the only debut call-up was 32-year-old Pascal Gross, a fine player but perhaps an indication of a lack of more exciting young talent to develop.
The squad’s core has not changed since the Euro 2020 campaign which led to Low’s resignation, bar the emergence of Jamal Musiala. Kimmich, Goretzka, Gundogan, Thomas Muller, Manuel Neuer, Rudiger, Leroy Sane and Gnabry appear a formidable group to rely on, yet a lack of reliable alternatives is the real issue. In the last year alone, Flick has called up 44 different players, with very few establishing themselves as indubitably secure picks.
This talent deficiency is clearest in two positions – striker and defender. Niclas Fullkrug’s journey from injury-prone second-tier frontman to national and Borussia Dortmund starting striker at 30 is lovely, but has only been allowed by a lack of genuine goalscoring quality in Germany. He has scored 47 per cent of the nation’s goals since his debut last November, indicative of the lack of threat from elsewhere on the pitch.
Similar issues are clear at the back. Flick’s defensive organisation and structure was often criticised, as it had been at Bayern, but he was also limited by personnel.
Against Japan, centre-back Nico Schlotterbeck played at left-back, a role he had previously inhabited for just 13 minutes of his senior career.
Kimmich was deployed at right-back, a role he has long fought to abandon, meaning Flick had to weaken central defence and midfield just to compensate for Germany’s lack of elite talent at either full back.
Schlotterbeck and Rudiger, alongside perhaps Niklas Sule, are the only centre-backs of truly international quality available, but also come with clear respective weaknesses. This is another fundamental issue with no obvious solution.
All this would be crisis enough without the rapidly increasing alienation of German football fans. Kai Havertz strongly criticised the lack of support for the team last week, a recurring theme in All or Nothing. Between the group-stage exits in 2018 and 2022, the national TV audience for international football dropped by about 16 million.
Next summer’s Euros is a rare opportunity to re-engage the domestic fanbase and crucially reintroduce hope to German football, something the 2006 World Cup also achieved on home soil. The chances of that happening will greatly depend on Flick’s permanent replacement, with Julian Nagelsmann, ex-U21s coach Stefan Kuntz and former Europa League-winning Eintracht Frankfurt boss Oliver Glasner among the favourites. This disparate target group highlights that a coherent strategy is still not close to implementation and exposes the gargantuan scale of the upcoming task.
Whoever takes over can now either recreate Das Reboot, Germany’s intricately executed path to world domination in 2014, or Das Boot, the epic journey of a submarine from heavily underwater to irreparably sunk. Die Nationalmannschaft’s prospects should only be able to improve, but whether they will has never been so unclear.
