The German national soccer team tortures its supporters after the euphoric game against Portugal in the Hungary duel with a nerve-thriller on a very low artistic level. You almost brought your trainer to an unworthy end.
With six minutes to go, the end was near: brave Hungarians led 2-1 against the German national team, it would have meant the end of this European championship for the DFB team. Last in the “death group” F. It would also have been the end of Joachim Löw’s long era. 17 years of national team, many of them good, four as reigning world champions, would culminate in disaster. The greatest possible catastrophe, which seemed unthinkable after the euphorically discussed 4-2 against Portugal. And yet that scenario seemed to be the most probable, until Leon Goretzka provided redemption with his stabber of love and postponed the end.
It was a terrible evening for most of the time from the point of view of the DFB and everyone who (still) keeps up with its most important team. It was noticeable very early on that none of the euphoria from the Portugal game was saved on the pitch. The national team is still a fragile structure. Seasoned Mats Hummels dribbled himself out in the 5th minute a few meters from his own goal, a little later it was 1-0 for the Hungarians and the German team was virtually out. And you could tell how desperation and insecurity crept in. You could feel it physically and you could see it on them. They were worse than they should have been, the actions piecemeal, imprecise. Everyone without exception. Surprised by the difficulties they found themselves in early on and probably also surprised by the Hungarians, who were trusted to do a lot, just not an early hit. “We don’t even need to compete against England like that,” warned Joshua Kimmich with a view to the round of 16 at Wembley.
An uneasy feeling becomes tangible
Above the German team, the sky poured out everything that was available to him that June evening in Munich. The rainbow, which dominated the confrontation with the game, was followed by the downpour, the storm whipped huge masses of water through the stadium and the patter of the rain, the whistling of the wind both created a creepy atmosphere in the arena. It mingled to a sound like an express train doing its laps under the roof. Always around, sonorous, a noise that swallowed the depressing silence, even the incredulous murmur of the German fans.
And under the cold, the lashing rain and the louder and louder chants of the Hungarians, the thought made its way into the arena more and more tangibly: There is something big in the air here. Nothing that feels good. The end of an era in German football. And at some point the feeling solidified: This is not the framework, not the game and not the way in which the Löw era can come to an end. Not imploding in the relentless stranglehold of a terrible game that seemed to be about football only marginally. No, the knockout was intended for a real showdown game at the earliest.
The aura of the tournament team, which still somehow repairs everything when it matters, has been dead since 2018 at the latest. But being eliminated under these circumstances, that was simply not the story of this evening. No, that couldn’t be the end. In the editorial offices the sporty obituaries for Löw’s time have long been in the drawers, only the end is still open. Nobody really expected to have to do it again that evening.
The idea is not professional and in view of the Hungarian team, which not only showed three games more than everyone expected and also positioned themselves clearly in the rainbow debate, not fair either. But that’s the way it was. Not here, not today, not in the face of the grim Hungarian “Carpathian Brigade” in the stands, which had attracted attention through racist attacks and homophobic tastelessness. Not minutes after the sky had just closed the locks again.
“It’s pretty hard to understand …”
There are good reasons to look forward to the time after Joachim Löw. Too regularly it causes amazement at how far the national team is from the sum of its individual parts. “Joachim Löw’s team were terrible in qualifying and in the Nations League. They achieved a historic result by losing to North Macedonia at home. It’s pretty hard to see why they have been so bad in recent years”, recently analyzed star coach José Mourinho for the English “Sun”. And Löw, the world champion trainer, all too often persisted in a distant pose between defiance and thin-skinnedness that did not suit him. There are also decisions by Löw that his successor Hansi Flick will quickly fix. The double six with Toni Kroos and İlkay Gündoğan, the triple chain that does not work reliably – there are a few fixed ideas in Löwschen’s repertoire that rob the team of a lot.
The 2018 World Cup ended in disaster, the national team had difficulties filling the stadiums long before Corona, and the fans were never supposed to be alienated from it main soccer team in the country bigger. The upheaval that Löw set in motion after the 2018 World Cup and which he defended with claws and almost to the point of escaping reality had to be cashed in. Against the Hungarians, it wasn’t a brilliant idea or a lucky hand from Löw that prevented the total loss. Rather, one had to wonder why he didn’t correct his misjudgment with Leroy Sané and instead randomly threw attacker after attacker onto the field in the hope of the “lucky punch”.
If at the end there is no title or at least a hero story, it will have been two or three years too long that Joachim Löw was national coach. It will be good for German football when Löw is no longer the national coach – and especially for him. In the last few months, after the announcement of his departure with the last European Championship game, he seemed looser again, freed from the constraints of the future, all to himself and alone in the here and now. And now, that was so close to being swept away by the Munich flood.
Löw wasn’t thinking about the end yet
Löw, who brought golden years to German football, had long been yesterday’s man on Wednesday evening. It would not have been an end that would have suited the story of the meritorious Joachim Löw. Malice and glee that would have descended on him and his troops like the tons of water on the lawn of the EM arena in Munich, it would not have done him justice. He didn’t think for a second about what failure would have meant for him, “really not. There were other things in the game for me. I don’t have time to think about what will be”.
And then, after an evening in which he spent most of the 90 minutes on the way to catastrophe, to dissolve his legacy, the national coach allowed himself a little relief: “We have shown extremely good morals, we made mistakes, but fought, we showed sensationally good morale. That wasn’t for the faint of heart. But in the end, what counts is that we are further. “
At some point the express train actually stopped doing its laps, the end of the world had been canceled. Shortly afterwards, Leon met Goretzka. Germany was allowed to celebrate a draw and progress. Just nobody did. The relief only briefly outweighed the disillusionment. “Germany is further and nobody knows why”, the Austrian “Krone” etched. Maybe because the story has to end differently.
.