Bosses choke off wild debate
Hansi Flick can do what he thinks is right
By Tobias Nordman
06/19/2023, 11:20 am
The national team has been in crisis mode for months. The past games against Ukraine and in Poland have caused criticism of national coach Hansi Flick to grow massively. The bosses defend the coach and his plan. Now it’s against Colombia.
Hansi Flick had not contributed to attracting people to the stadium and cheering on the DFB team in the past few days. The international trio that came against Colombia in Gelsenkirchen on Tuesday evening (from 8.45 p.m. on RTL and in the ntv.de live ticker) the national coach likes to use it intensively to try things out. Only from September, when the season starts and with it the countdown to the planned summer fairy tale Reloaded, does the decisive phase begin for him. However, Flick is dragging an increasingly heavy mortgage into this. The doubts about his plan are growing, the discussions are rampant.
The national coach does not have to worry about his job. Contrary to all the debates that have been initiated about possible successors, even DFB director Rudi Völler was named as the savior of the German problem child (although he has not been the coach for 18 years), the bosses of the DFB stand by Flick. Völler, for example, praised the head coach several times over the weekend as “an absolute top trainer”. And of course Flick will stay. “That’s not up for debate.” On the return flight from Warsaw, where the DFB team lost 1-0 on Friday, Völler reinsured himself with President Bernd Neuendorf and had a long phone call with DFB Vice Hans-Joachim Watzke on Saturday. The general assessment: Flick will stay until the home European Championship, come what may.
“This is a normal process”
The situation was “the fate of a coach,” Völler admitted. You have to “be able to endure a little bit”. His impression: “Hansi can do that too.” He will not throw down. The 1990 world champion, who often repeats himself in his argument, is convinced of Flick’s master plan for a strong home tournament. The tactical and personal experiments are tolerated. The hope of the DFB director: “Quality will prevail in the end.” Therefore he would rather be “sports director of our team than sports director of Poland”.
Because of the recent earnings crisis, “directly proclaiming the end of the West is completely exaggerated,” said DFB President Neuendorf on Sunday evening on ZDF. “I experience it (Editor’s note: Flick) and his team of coaches on campus, you can see how meticulously and carefully they work, that they think about it.” The personal and tactical experiments a year before the home EM must be conceded to the coach. “It’s a normal process,” Neuendorf said: “If he tries things, it’s not helplessness, it’s the struggle: how do we get the best team on the pitch?” He denied that Flick was running out of time with a view to the finals in twelve months: “We we’re still a year away!”
Not too much should happen anymore, because all the alarm bells around the team are already ringing. The gentle euphoria that arose in the summer of 2021, when the 58-year-old took over the team and ended Joachim Löw’s tough era, has long since been eaten up. Many fans lack understanding for many things that Flick does. He experiments like a wild professor. For years there has been a discussion about who can solve the storm problem in Germany. The top solution, i.e. the one at the highest international level, does not exist. But Niclas Füllkrug instead. He made eight appearances for Germany and scored seven times. That’s outstanding. But the striker from Werder Bremen, who may be facing a change this summer, is set, but not. At least not always.
Will İlkay Gündoğan take over now?
In the struggle for stability and a new axis in the national team, there is hardly a player who has more arguments than the 30-year-old. But well, September is yet to come and then perhaps the time for “Lücke” will finally come. Another man who is making waves internationally but has yet to find his place in the national team is İlkay Gündoğan. It’s hard to believe: at Manchester City, the best club team in the world, he’s the captain, actually indispensable for Josep Guardiola and not just a heroic survey without substance. In the DFB team, however, he commutes between the pitch and the bank. Joshua Kimmich, Leon Goretzka and for years Thomas Müller were rated higher in the possible positions.
In Gelsenkirchen, his hometown, Gündoğan will play from the start. A glimmer of hope for this team, which makes an effort, but keeps making fatal mistakes and has staggered through the past few months without speed or ideas. The DFB team never recovered from the embarrassing World Cup in Qatar. And for Flick it even applies: he has lost large parts of his trust and sometimes seems at a loss. Which of course he denies. must negate. And so he has to endure that the personnel decisions are discussed more and more vehemently. Best example: Niklas Süle. Apart from Antonio Rüdiger, there is no constant in defense – and no reliable alternatives. But Süle has been delivering for years. Punishing him for not fulfilling his potential (which presumably also has something to do with his diet) seems very inappropriate in view of the sometimes big mistakes of the competitors.
Wild discussions break out in other corners as well. Thomas Müller is apparently about to return, and there is at least speculation about Mats Hummels. Breaking off the upheaval again? And experts like Bastian Schweinsteiger even bring up the idea of not only concentrating on the footballing class when nominating, but also increasingly nominating mentality players. Players who are bursting with pride to play for the national team, who go every meter, no matter how painful. Players like Füllkrug, like Rani Khedira from Union Berlin would be.
In Bremen people are already whistling
But hey, Flick is experimenting in his own way. With the staff. By the system. There’s the chain of three. He would like the team to be able to master this variation as well, in order to be more flexible. So far the experiment has failed. And nothing indicates that the trainer is close to a successful solution formula. This try-and-error principle (a lot of try, even more error) sometimes leads to whistles, as was the case recently in the 3-3 win over Ukraine in Bremen. The team lacks conviction and automatisms. The most recent four victories came against an Italian B-Elf, Oman, Costa Rica and Peru. A bitter truth about the state of the team.
The concerns of the partly unsettled players meanwhile seem to be significantly greater than those responsible. “The situation is deadly serious,” said Robin Gosens. Antonio Rüdiger missed “the last greed” in the Warsaw National Stadium against an opponent with limited resources. Joshua Kimmich warned. “Other nations that won the last tournaments didn’t start playing good football in preparation for the tournament,” said Kimmich: “They managed to win a lot of games. ” And the decisive phase may already begin in Gelsenkirchen: “On Tuesday,” emphasized Völler, “it’s not a friendly game. We have to show people that they can count on us.”