Julian Nagelsmann is to become the new national coach. A coup for the crisis-plagued DFB and good news for FC Bayern Munich, the 36-year-old’s former club. He formulated his plan to save German football (and his career) a long time ago.
There shouldn’t be any signatures yet, but the burden of proof is overwhelming: Julian Nagelsmann is taking over the problem child national team around six months after leaving FC Bayern Munich. He is supposed to coach the team, which has been off track for years, at the 2024 European Championships. The next few months and especially the European Championships in Germany will show what happens afterwards.
The association and the designated new national coach have less than nine months left for their venture, which will fatefully unite both of them. The initial situation is known. Since winning the 2014 World Cup, the DFB has been in a downward spiral, which has rapidly gained momentum since the 2018 World Cup in Russia. World champion coach Joachim Löw and Hansi Flick, who was fired the previous week, were unable to prevent the crash; in fact, they were partly responsible for it.
Almost ten months after the exit from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the departure of Oliver Bierhoff, the DFB has now repositioned itself at all sporting levels. “A transformation process,” said DFB President Bernd Neuendorf at the beginning of this week about the changes in the association, which have now come to an end, at least among the men, with the appointment of Nagelsmann.
Nagelsmann has to train 80 million national coaches
It’s good news for the DFB, which proves shortly after the task force fell apart that there don’t have to be seven people who have to search for a new national coach. In the end, as their actions so far had proven, they would have agreed on Rudi Völler again anyway. That didn’t happen now. Association expert Stefan Kuntz was also left out; the old strategists Louis van Gaal and Felix Magath had tried in vain.
The day before, the new DFB managing director Andreas Rettig had appealed for the honor of a possible new national coach Julian Nagelsmann. He couldn’t imagine that the move to the DFB could fail due to financial issues. It was said that the parties were still a good three million euros apart. Only a short time later they reached an agreement.
Which speaks for Nagelsmann. He will not sit out his well-paid contract with FC Bayern Munich. Rather, he is taking on the most prominent coaching job in the country. It will be his job to get 80 million national coaches in Germany behind him. Finally these disappeared. They were simply interested in other things. They didn’t enjoy the expertise of the national team enough; the discrepancy between expectations and reality was too great.
FC Bayern is also a winner
Nagelsmann may have been released from FC Bayern Munich. But you shouldn’t forget this: until the days when the club finally slipped away from him at the beginning of 2023, he was nothing other than the future of German football. As annoying and, yes, as narcissistic as he came across from time to time, he could afford it. It was not without reason that he ended up at the biggest German club at a young age.
His attention to detail in football had brought him a lot of attention at his previous positions in Hoffenheim and Leipzig, but he failed in Munich. Not necessarily because of the football, but rather because of the turbulence they got into at Bayern at the latest with the end of the World Cup in Qatar and Manuel Neuer’s injury. Now Nagelsmann has the chance at the DFB to prove that it wasn’t his fault. Although he will hardly have any training sessions with his new team, he has a decisive advantage. Many players know him and his game idea.
The record champions, Nagelsmann’s old club, have also found an ideal solution. Although they are now foregoing a rumored transfer fee of around 10 million euros, they have also been able to achieve two small victories. Nagelsmann will no longer appear on the payroll in the future and this alone will give the club further scope for possible new signings in the winter. But they were able to win the bigger of the small victories well in advance. By waiving the transfer fee, they show that the DFB can rely on the figurehead of German professional football in times of crisis, regardless of the skirmishes following the appointment of DFB managing director Andreas Rettig.
Remarkable words in a lost interview
So it’s a decision that at first glance only produces winners. It is one that is courageous and forward-looking for both the association and the new national coach, despite the initially very short-term contract. A failure of the Julian Nagelsmann project would not only downgrade the coach by several categories, but would ultimately also reignite the debates about the pitiful state of German football. To prevent this, the 36-year-old master coach should remember his beginnings in professional football.
When Nagelsmann’s star rose at TSG Hoffenheim, he was still the coach who was introduced with his age instead of his name, he said in an interview with “The Ringer“Remarkable sentences. A few months earlier he had saved the small club from Kraichgau from relegation, and now in January 2017 he prepared to lead the village club into the Champions League for the first time ever.
“In smaller clubs like ours, not only the team, but rather the whole club has to work for the common goal,” he told US magazine: “Respect for each other is another important point in achieving this goal. We don’t have to love each other all the time and hug each other all the time. We can be critical of each other, but we all have to work towards that one goal.”
A departure in late autumn
The common goal is now clearly defined: the 2024 European Championship in our own country should not become the next disaster for the DFB. Based on the impressions we have gathered from the past tournaments, the national team is no longer a big team for a long time. Respect for each other was also not in abundance. There is also no discernible love affair between Rettig, Völler, Nagelsmann and the rest of the association. But that’s the goal.
Even if Nagelsmann remembers his origins, he will not be able to immediately fix the problems at all levels. The designated national coach is not a savior. However, with the cleaner Rudi Völler and Rettig, who is trying to reach an agreement, he has people around him who can make a lot of changes in their fields and target groups. The DFB completely reorganized itself within a week. In these very last days of late summer it actually smells a little like departure. This is more than was expected at the beginning of September. But everything stands or falls with the tournament in the summer of 2024. There are no more shades of gray, and hopefully no greylag geese either.