The DFB-Elf would like to create a spirit of optimism, but just under a year before the European Championship at home, the crisis spread with the draw against Ukraine. National coach Hansi Flick speaks of solutions, but problems dominate on the pitch. That raises questions.
The benevolent conclusion of this 3:3 (1:2) draw against Ukraine could be that the German national team proved to be a good host. The early lead by Niclas Füllkrug was followed by several friendly invitations to score goals for the Ukrainian footballers in Bremen’s Weser Stadium, which made them dream of their first win against the four-time world champions in their ninth meeting.
In the final minutes, the eleven of national coach Hansi Flick caught up a 1: 3 deficit and just averted the deserved defeat. And got some late applause from the ranks for a performance that gave little clue as to why the selection of the German Football Association should suddenly be one of the title favorites again after three disappointing tournaments in just under a year at the home European Championship.
Füllkrug, who took the lead with his seventh goal in seven international matches, said afterwards that there were “phases” in which we players thought: ‘How can it be that we’re in this situation right now? And what’s up just off here?'” A bitter insight, because many who hold it with the DFB-Elf must have had similar thoughts. How can it be that the defense is still so fragile? How can it be that there is still hardly any stability in the center? How can it be that the offensive effectiveness is often dependent on individual actions? Füllkrug thanked Kai Havertz, who scored the 2:3 himself in the final phase and took the penalty to make it 3:3, “that we had individual quality […] von Kai were still able to turn this game into a draw”.
Politics no longer distracts from sport
Flick, on the other hand, summed it up: “The game shows the condition of the team.” He seemed a bit at a loss during these 90 minutes, which must have raised far more questions than they provided answers. If this game reflects the state of the team, then seven months after the disastrous first-round elimination at the World Cup in Qatar, no progress can be seen. Even if it was ultimately “only” a benefit game against a team from Ukraine, whose homeland has been threatened in its existence for 475 days, since February 24, 2022, by the illegal invasion of Russia.
The game successfully set an example for solidarity, for cohesion against the aggressor, but that’s not the point at this point. It’s about the sporting insights, and they are once again sobering: again the DFB-Elf conceded three goals, as they did against Belgium in March, again they were lucky that there weren’t more. She has kept clean sheets in just 2 of her last 14 games – a 1-0 win over Oman in November and a 2-0 win over Peru in March – but has conceded 21 goals, 1.5 per game, during that time.
Almost desperately, the DFB is campaigning for a spirit of optimism before the home tournament, in Bremen the premium product of the troubled association had to put up with loud whistles and boos, the “Werder Bremen” and “Here reigns the SVW” chants were clear Expressions of displeasure at the disappointing performance. Politics may have successfully pushed Oliver Bierhoff’s successor Rudi Völler off the pitch, symbolized by the return to the captain’s armband in black, red and gold. However, that only draws the focus even more on how bleak it looks sporty twelve months before the home EM.
What will become of Kimmich and Goretzka?
Flick spoke of “individual mistakes” that would have turned the game around after a good start. At 1: 1, the German defense was taken by surprise by a quick counterattack, at 1: 2 they defended in a similarly amateurish way, the 1: 3 resulted from a catastrophic half-high back pass and a slip – but it would have been too short, the professionals alone once again to blame the frightening performance. Instead, the focus is increasingly on the question of which plan the national coach is actually pursuing, whether it really just fails because of the implementation – or whether Flick is pursuing the wrong ideas.
The DFB-Elf played against Ukraine for the first time under Flick with a back three, but it was so shaky that the national coach returned to the back four shortly after the change of sides to prevent a debacle. “We need another system,” said Flick afterwards, why he relied on the alternative defensive formation: “That didn’t work so well in various situations today.” Nevertheless, the back three should also be used in the games in Poland and against Colombia before the summer break.
“I think one or the other had a bit of bad luck today and didn’t have the best day,” said Füllkrug, who didn’t want to single anyone out and criticized the team as a whole. “It was also the first time for the boys that there was a back three in the national team, a constellation that we haven’t had before,” said Füllkrug. Flick, on the other hand, spoke of a “long process”, captain Joshua Kimmich named “what we have to stop: the mistakes at the back and front, the exploitation of opportunities”.
Flick, on the other hand, had to ask himself in Bremen what he wanted to achieve with the change in central midfield. Despite growing criticism, the national coach is sticking to the Joshua Kimmich/Leon Goretzka duo, but this time with Goretzka in the more defensive role and Kimmich in the more offensive one. Game control did not bring this reorganization, instead Flick referred to the impressions of the non-public training. “What I see in training is at a very high level,” said the national coach, “but the team loses confidence in their quality relatively quickly.” An alarming admission.
The goal is clear, the way to get there is not at all
Flick, who has been the national coach since August 2021, tried to respond to the growing criticism of his leadership with purposeful optimism: “If we want to pull something positive out of it: With two individual performances by Kai Havertz, we balanced the game again.” Sure, it’s an international match after the end of the season in club football, the sporting value of which is manageable. Only: As the automatically qualified hosts of the European Championship, it is mainly these games in which the DFB team have to develop their form for the tournament.
“Nevertheless,” Flick continued: “Cheer up, it will continue on Friday, we just want to fix the mistakes.” However, those mistakes have been running through the game of the German team for months, and Flick does not seem to have developed any practical solutions so far. Instead, surprisingly for many, he looked for a return to the 2006 World Cup, when “in March we lost 4-1 in Italy and it was an incredibly negative atmosphere. Nevertheless, it has become a summer fairy tale.” At the time, Flick was an assistant to team boss Jürgen Klinsmann, who actually managed to create a spirit of optimism at the start of the tournament.
But the current edition of the German national soccer team is far from that. The Ukraine also managed to reveal and exploit the weaknesses of the DFB-Elf, which go far beyond individual shortcomings. “We have a plan as far as the whole thing is concerned,” said Flick when asked about the unconvincing experiment with the three-man chain, “we will continue to follow through.” Before the hat-trick against Ukraine, Poland and Colombia, he had emphasized that he was “in the process of making the Euro” and “wanted to use the three games” to have different insights at the end of this trip”. With the impressions from Bremen it turns out all the more the question of where this path should actually lead.