Friday, September 03, 2021
But more problems for Flick
The DFB-Elf is not FC Bayern
By Tobias Nordmann
The debut against Liechtenstein should actually have gone very differently, more sovereign, clearer, giving more hope. But the German football world is not a request concert even under the new national coach Hansi Flick. Well, what do you do with this game now?
There are people who are already looking for the panic button again. Your argument: A 2-0 victory for the German national team against Liechtenstein. Against LIECHTENSTEIN! Never before had it been so close for a DFB team against the tumbling football dwarf. Whereby the word “scarce” pulls the critic on the wrong track. Because it was only tight in the result. But something else caused alarm moments: never before had a DFB team had to wait so damn long for a goal against the selection of the principality as this Thursday evening in St. Gallen. It was not until the 41st minute that Timo Werner released the team and the coach. His name is now Hansi Flick and he made his debut in the away game in the World Cup qualification.
Werner replaced Lukas Podolski with his sense of achievement. So far, he had been the man who had scored the latest opening goal (21st minute) for a German team against Liechtenstein. That happened almost exactly 13 years ago, on September 6th, 2008. In media reports from that time it was said: Despite the rather late leadership, there was little to complain about about the Germans’ game. Such sentences could not be read on September 2 (match reports) and on September 3, 2021 (follow-up reports). Even if there is still mildness. Accordingly, it is not Flick who is responsible for the result, but Joachim Löw. The team from the era of the predecessor has retained too much lethargy and lack of ideas.
Nobody expected that in such a clear way, you have to be that honest. The disillusionment was correspondingly great, Lothar Matthäus spoke on behalf of the collective: “Germany missed a lot of things that we expected from this team today,” he began in his analysis as an RTL expert. “No 1: 1 situation, bad runs in depth, too slow passing game,” complained the 60-year-old. There was also a lack of courage. “Liechtenstein only fouled three times.” In their own ranks, too, there was a slight upset instead of euphoria. “Of course we decided to score more goals. We struggled. It was strange, difficult, the opponent defended so deeply, I’ve almost never seen it like this before,” said captain Joshua Kimmich. Nothing really worked. “It is” difficult to rate this game. It wasn’t really a football game. “
But that should have been it. And what one! In the run-up, debates were held about the clarity of the result. And about which elements of Flick’s dominance Bavaria drive away the lethargy of the past Löw years. Spectacular raids, aggressive pressing, a lot of speed, that should have been it against the highly praised beer and sausage footballers (praise, not diss) from the principality. After all, these are elements of the game idea with which the new national coach wants to lead the team out of the dreariness and back to the top. With which he wants to drive away the “dark clouds” under which the German Football Association (DFB) has been stuck for years and cannot find a way to finally get back on course for fair weather. For a moment, the DFB discovered the sun at the EM. When a warming video circulated on social media of Joshua Kimmich and pals from the team creating a campfire moment with Klampfe.
Bierhoff continues to believe in the world title
The association had learned. He just let the video be video. Simply authentic. Not pimped to a high gloss and cannibalized in the media. It was a moment of humility. A moment that was a points victory in the battle for fans and passion in the country. More are to follow now. With a flick. And he had already won before the game. Because a bit of enthusiasm was there again, simply because the new coach was there. It doesn’t happen often either. Now the tender Hansi hype on this Thursday evening has not turned into a resurrection in a flash. But also not a sudden departure from the team. There is still the belief that there will soon be good times for football Germany again. Around a third of those surveyed (32 percent) stated in a Forsa survey commissioned by RTL and ntv that they trust Flick and the national team to win the World Cup in Qatar next year.
We (actually) do not know whether DFB director Oliver Bierhoff is one of the respondents. But he definitely belongs to the camp of the optimistic. In an interview with the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” and the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten” he admitted that he would trust the DFB team to win another title in 2022. “Despite the respect for the opponents and the difficulties we had recently, this is a realistic goal – because we have a high quality team, even if we haven’t quite brought it on against Liechtenstein. As Germans For the national team, we always have to claim to go to a tournament like this in order to win it in the end. “
That’s probably true. Even if “The Team” with their achievements since triumphing at the Confederation Cup 2017 has moved further and further away from this claim. In the meantime, there has been a considerable gap. Will it help the fragile construct that Flick took over that everything can be trusted? Questionable. Even more questionable: does it actually correspond to reality? Sure, the quality of the individual players is tremendous. But not across the board. The deficits are known: A striker is missing. And until someone matures again who revives the great tradition of the “Neuner” and “Elfer”, that takes time. Even if it doesn’t have to be a Robert Lewandowski or an Erling Haaland. Flick sees it this way: “We would have liked to have scored one or two more goals. We created chances, but it is not a matter of course that the team is convinced that they will score goals. We have to get that.”
Flick had seen a few good approaches …
And on the right back, not everything is (yet) fine again. Ridle Baku is the name of hope. And rightly so. He has shown outstanding performances at VfL Wolfsburg. He was offensive but mostly more present than defensive. A little more balance would be good in the national team. Against Liechtenstein he played erratically and imprecisely. It may take a little longer than hoped for hopes to turn Baku into top performers. And what’s in the back left? Sure, Robin Gosens plays there. But in principle it is like Baku with him. He, too, is more of a man who thinks ahead and plays. How defensive he is in the really big and the very close games is still not fully understood, no matter how outstanding he was at Atalanta Bergamo, no matter how furious he played against a mostly disastrous Portugal at the European Championship.
The list of problems is by no means ticked off. There are still the standards. They now have their own trainer. It’s called Mads Buttgereit. And after the Liechtenstein game he should have seen again how much work he still has to do. The corners and free kicks, they were about as remarkable as the end result. Another thing: Flick has to drive out the inexplicable sluggishness of Löw’s final years and give them speed – there is a lack of potential with Serge Gnabry, Jamal Musiala, Leroy Sané, Marco Reus, Kai Havertz, Timo Werner and whatever their names are not.
And then there is the pressing. The key to Flick’s great success at FC Bayern. From autumn 2019, he transformed the starving club into an all-round winner in a hurry. And the pressing was now also the key to the surprising success of the Italians at the EM. Even before St. Gallen he had agreed that the current best teams on the continent had achieved success with “high ball wins”. He had already discovered a bit of this against Liechtenstein: “We saw that the team is ready to put the opponent under direct pressure,” he said and praised: “We won the ball early and everyone was well involved.” First successful team building measures, so to speak. That is also very important. Because a conspiratorial group, a well-rehearsed team in which every trade intervenes – the DFB-Elf has not been for years. Italy is the model. The way from the low point to the title takes three years. Flick doesn’t even have one and a half. Time to panic? No. But (little) time for a lot of work. Flick says: “Every beginning is not always easy.” But who would really have thought that?
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