Early from the DFB women
The next alarm signal for Hansi Flick
By Sebastian Schneider
08/04/2023, 3:15 p.m
Historically, the DFB women fail at the World Cup in Australia. The sudden end should also set off alarm bells for the men, who are playing a European championship in their own country next year. Because there isn’t much time left.
It’s an old football truism: attack is the best defense. If the ball is as far away as possible from your own goal, nothing can actually happen. At least that’s what it says in theory, but in practice it’s much more complicated. And yet some fall back on such rushes, although they should know better. The men’s national coach, Hansi Flick, recently proved this in the most public way, who vomited in the “kicker” a few days ago about his team’s permanent crisis (his wording, not ours).
Now, a few days after his attack, he is said to have followed with concern how his colleague Martina Voss-Tecklenburg and her team were surprisingly eliminated from the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, as happened to him at the Qatar World Cup last winter. The early end joins the more recent debacle of the once successful German Football Association – after the men and the U21s, who also failed in the preliminary round of the European Championship.
But Flick’s attack came before the DFB women were eliminated and looked like this: “We have to broadcast again: We are Germany, the others should come here first and they should realize that it’s going to be difficult against us,” he demanded. The fact that the upcoming European Championships in his own country have so far sparked little euphoria doesn’t seem to worry him either. “If we win, we’ll change the mood. It’s in our own hands.” What else should he say?
Failed by arrogance
The early end of the women must also be an alarm signal for him that it won’t be that easy. That the belief “It will work out somehow” is not enough. That the story that all German national football teams are tournament teams is a fairy tale. Simply wanting to win games is not enough. Nobody is afraid of the DFB representatives – apart from the women’s U19 team and the men’s U17.
The World Cup debacle in Australia provided the best example: the DFB women delivered poor friendlies before the World Cup. They struggled to a 2-1 win against Vietnam and an unflattering 3-2 defeat against Zambia. The DFB entourage kept saying that it wasn’t so bad, that test match results shouldn’t dazzle. After all, it was the same before the 2021 European Championship. They, too, relied on the understanding of old times, converted into a new arrogance.
But what if that’s not the case – neither for women nor for men. What if test match results and a well-rehearsed team are important? After all, that’s what critics have been trying to point out to the national coach for months. The men also delivered miserable friendlies this year – even significantly more than the women. There was a terrible first half against Belgium in March, followed by defeats to Poland and Colombia in June. In this calendar year, Flick’s team has only won one game – against Peru, really not a football giant.
But apart from that, there are other parallels that go well beyond the results. The rosters of both teams are undoubtedly good enough to be able to compete in the world class, even if the individual players may not be world class. But with the DFB women it became obvious that at least towards the end of the third group game there was no real game idea. The balls were only hit for a long time at captain Alexandra Popp, that’s not enough for a world championship. They weren’t able to bring what they had originally planned, attacking football with a lot of counter-pressing, to the pitch.
Numerous defenses
In addition, the bad luck with injuries also disrupted the preparation of the DFB women. Regular player Giulia Gwinn was missing from the start, defender Marina Hegering came out of her injury late, Felicitas Rauch and Sara Doorsoun were injured during the tournament – the whole thing was preceded by the dispute with Bayern Munich. In her analysis immediately after the 1-1 draw against South Korea, Voss-Tecklenburg said that she may have taken too much account of the interests of the clubs and of load management.
Here, too, the parallels with the men’s DFB team are not far away – only bad luck with injuries was not always responsible for this. Hansi Flick has sometimes made adventurous squad nominations. Sometimes he deliberately left experienced regulars at home (Serge Gnabry), sometimes to give them a lesson (Niklas Süle), sometimes he gave them the option to return to the squad (Thomas Müller). In the past 23 games, the national coach offered almost as many different defenses. So far, no eleven has only been able to get used to the game or develop something like a game idea – this criticism is not new either.
Officially, there are still four international matches before the men’s European Championships, and there will certainly be two or three more friendlies immediately before the tournament begins. There really isn’t enough time to get used to it. European champions Italy had been unbeaten for 27 games before the European Championship triumph, World champion Argentina even 36 before the World Cup. Successful tournaments aren’t successful because it pisses you off, but because you laid the foundation months in advance.