What remains when someone says goodbye? Joachim Löw has long been Germany’s most successful national coach, but is losing a lot towards the end of his career. After leaving, he leaves a void. But not that of a trainer, but of a person with ups and downs.
What remains? What do you remember when you look back on 15 years as national coach Joachim Löw? Of course, the 2014 world championship title should come to mind first. Nobody can take the fourth star on the DFB jersey from Löw. Löw is forever one of the (so far) countable German king coaches. But if football fans look back on the last few years, if they talk about the 2018 World Cup, about botched qualifying games, from the early end of the 2021 European Championship, then they also have a bitter taste in their mouths.
Joachim Löw gone, Angela Merkel gone. Much is not like before afterwards. 17 years with the DFB, farewell as national coach in the summer after the messed up European Championship. Everything is finite, including the oh-so-indestructible Jogi. But even if Löw’s departure is a milestone in football Germany, nobody reacts really sadly to the message announced in spring. This is probably also due to the fact that his exit also (perhaps above all) holds a chance for the national team and the team uses this directly with new coach Hansi Flick in the first seven games with seven wins.
It is probably also due to the miserable results that Löw had in recent years. On his botched upheaval. Nevertheless, when someone leaves, the question arises: what remains? What did Joachim Löw leave behind that made sense? With all the embarrassments and negative headlines of the recent past, the achievements of the former national coach must not be forgotten. Especially because the 61-year-old had a lasting impact on German football.
More than the big successes
Together with Jürgen Klinsmann, he sent Germany into collective football fever at the 2006 World Cup in a way that nobody had before. After the summer fairy tale, Löw steps out of Klinsmann’s shadow and takes over a young, hungry national team. At the EM 2008 in Austria and Switzerland, Philipp Lahm let himself be boiled once and Fernando Torres denied Löws the perfect start to his national coaching position. And yet: Within a short period of time, the man from Breisgau has tinkered with a title candidate and will lead the DFB-Elf back to the top of the world in the long term.
At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the Löw-Elf might play their most beautiful football – despite or perhaps because of the loss of Capitano Michael Ballack shortly before the tournament. Power counter-attacks, a young and lively Mesut Özil, a fresh Thomas Müller, a sure-fire Miroslav Klose: Especially the 4-1 against England and the 4-0 against Argentina in the last sixteen and quarter-finals will remain unforgettable. In the semifinals, the Spanish team, to which the national coach always looks up, is either already or still, depending on your point of view, one step further. If Löw hadn’t faced these world-class Spaniards, who had been dominant for years, against him in his era, who knows …
It’s not the big successes that last when an era-defining coach leaves. But also its characteristics. Löw can never really convince with humor. During his time in office, he is neither a popular figure à la Jürgen Klopp nor the human catcher à la Hansi Flick. But he is a caring, almost affectionate coach who always stands in front of his players. This is how Löw protects Mesut Özil when he had to take a lot of criticism long before he left the national team. Those who make it into their chosen circle will not be dropped anytime soon. The principle sometimes bears fruit (Miroslav Klose, Lukas Podolski), in other cases Löw’s certain stubbornness is a mistake (Julian Draxler).
If Löw proved his courageous traits at the 2010 World Cup, he added resilience, a thirst for knowledge and a willingness to learn at the 2014 World Cup. He draws the right conclusions from the European Championship defeat against Italy in 2012 (Löw adapts his system to take Andrea Pirlo under cover) and in Brazil the DFB-Elf does not submit to anyone at the 2014 World Cup, but forces their own dominant game the opponent. This time Löw rides the wave to the final – where he comes on again with a courageous move Joker goal scorer Mario Götze shortly before the end.
Data and facts alone are not enough to discuss what the former national coach is leaving behind. Many special moments and memories will stay forever in the minds of football fans and will move something in their hearts. They encourage you to pause and can bring back the emotions of what you experienced back then. Similar to honest and authentic pictures, in which nobody poses and which you do not want to stick in the photo album at first because they appear blurred or blurred.
A selection: exuberant cheers on every street corner in 2006, “Schweini and Poldi”, Löw in “his” blue sweater on the edge of the field, Mario Ballotelli topless in a winning pose, the national coach while walking on the beach in Brazil, his “scho au” in every interview , Libero goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, stunned Brazilian football fans after the historic 7: 1, Bastian Schweinsteiger, who was bleeding from the eye and crying in the arms of his coach, celebrating fans at the Brandenburg Gate after the 2014 World Cup, frustrated mines after the embarrassing end in Russia.
Humiliations towards the end
When someone says goodbye, you also notice that all people have contradicting sides. Löw is always a strictly professional coach. No storyteller, no one who makes a fuss about himself. Löw’s unobtrusiveness is perhaps his most sympathetic quality to outsiders. The former national coach, however, who is always fair to journalists, never lets himself go crazy or misbehaves, lies to himself after the 2014 World Cup. He lacks new energy, new stimuli and impulses. After the Euro 2016, he no longer really reached the team. Don’t feel them anymore. Even before the 2018 World Cup you can see: The DFB-Elf is no longer world class. And neither is her trainer. Only Löw does not want to admit either.
The international years 2018 to 2021 are catastrophic. The German team plays too inconsistently. The upheaval that Low has promised many times does not succeed – despite an incredible amount of talent. Within a few years, Löw collected the worst World Cup performance since 1938 (World Cup 2018), the highest defeat in 89 years (0: 6 against Spain last November) and a bleak 1: 2 against North Macedonia at the beginning of this year. Humiliations for the soccer teacher that he would have liked to save himself – and that many soccer fans turn against him.
And now? Sepp Herberger, Helmut Schön and Franz Beckenbauer have long been legends anyway, Berti Vogts at least secured a (dubious) Hit hit, Rudi Völler achieved cult status, Jürgen Klinsmann stepped down in front of cheering fans at the Brandenburg Gate – but Löw only got a measly trellis against Liechtenstein. So what is left of Jogi Löw after his seemingly eternal term of office?
A completely normal person
“It wasn’t the farewell that we all imagined,” said the now former national coach at his last press conference after leaving the 2021 European Championship. “The disappointment runs very, very deep.” No German national coach has collected more international matches than Löw. Hardly anyone was more successful.
In the summer of 2021 someone left who had advanced German football. With his offensively thought game, he gave the German fans a lot of joy, and fed them unforgettable moments and pictures into their memories. One who showed many human traits and defended his players. But there is also someone obsessed with success, an insatiable person who absolutely wanted to continue and who found the jump too late, even when things stopped working.
It is not the successful coach or the long outdated coach that remains, but the person Joachim Löw. With all its facets, with its care and its mistakes and weaknesses.