Complacency killed Germany’s campaign Germans mocked after downfall
HUMILIATING EXIT Defending champions pay price for poor selection, unenthusiastic football, left to wallow in despair VATUTINKI:
Russia Charts, graphs and statistical analysis will not explain shock Germany’s World Cup exit. The reason lies not in numbers but in German football’s complacency.
Every aspect of the national pastime, and that includes clubs, the top league, the national association (DFB) and the players themselves, has fed off this complacency for years.
Ever since their brilliant 2014 World Cup victory the main actors of German football rested on their laurels, raked in the cash and thought the good times will last for ever. But they didn’t.
Two defeats and one last-gasp victory in the group stage meant an embarrassed Germany made their earliest World Cup exit in 80 years on Wednesday.
Rewind to 2014 just before the world Cup, when four German clubs battled their way through the group stages and into the Champions League round of 16. This season it was just one.
Back in 2013, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund played out an all-German Champions League final. No German club has made it past the last four since.
In 2011 and 2012 Dortmund won the league. Since then it has been a Bayern monopoly. The reasons for all this are simple: money. The Bundesliga is eager to highlight its ongoing financial boom but that boom has also brought with it a one-sided, boring and predictable competition where Bayern win every time.
The lack of league competition, as the cash-rich DFB looks on without any interest of intervening, has meant that German players have seriously lost their competitive edge. Deals in China are more important than giving fans in Freiburg or Hanover a decent competition to watch.
Even Bayern does not need to create its own players anymore. Its swelling savings account has meant it can just buy them, with Thomas Mueller being their truly home-grown player.
STUBBORN LOEW
Add to that Germany coach Joachim Loew’s own complacency, with the coach stubbornly insisting on fielding virtually the same core of players for almost a decade. “Why should I lose trust in them after one game,” he snapped after their opening defeat to Mexico.
Players like Mueller, Jerome Boateng, Mesut Ozil, Sami Khedira and Manuel Neuer have long stopped chasing international success and are now quicker to show off their latest clothes, cars, Joachim Lowe’s selection of players appeared towards pleasing the outgoing German generation, than actually building a squad that could defend the crown. Leaving out Manchester City’s winger Leroy Sane (in pic) had been the biggest talking point before the World Cup. Sane had scored 10 goals and 15 assists in the Premier League this season. The biggest area that Germany lost out on was on goal scoring. The four-time world champions have always had a goal-getter leading their World Cup charge since 2002 — the absence of a strikerinthemouldofMiroslav
Klose was really felt this time.
Their main forward, Timo Werner (in pic) looked a long way off his form with RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga past season. He Lowe (in pic) has played a version of his 4-2-3-1 for the past eight years and of course it has become predictable. The only real change in terms of set up was replacing Bastian Schweinsteiger with a more attacking-minded midfielder like Julian Draxler or Marco Reus. But even Reus, while threating on several occasions, did not exhibit his usual burst of pace. The traits of Germany’s full backs Joshua Kimmich and Jonas Hector lean more towards attacking than actually impending threats. The duo were simply not quick enough to get back into defensive positions during opposing counter attacks. And Mexico proved so when Javier Hernandez and Hirving Lozano combined swiftly to score the winner. houses, tattoos or shoes than their latest football achievements. Their collective last good season was back in 2014.
Even the DFB’s own smugness was evident in its tournament slogan — ‘the Best Never Rest’ —, its Germany were restricted to playing the ball centrally, lacking speed and threat out wide, something Sane would have unquestionably brought to the team.
Mario Gomez’s selection over Sandro Wagner, who has netted 14 times in the Bundesliga this season, was also another shocking decision. Gomez missed straightforward chances in all three games. was sandwiched between the left flank and centre-forward in almost every game, leaving him at the edge of the box more often rather than at the centre of it.
Bayer Leverkusen striker Julian Brandt was only brought on for cameo roles and failed to impact the game from the bench. The 22-year-old’s shots came agonisingly close on several occasions and he certainly deserved more game time. The responsibility of building attacks from the middle fell onto Thomas Mueller, a proven goal-getter rather than an actual provider. Mesut Ozil seemed lethargic and lost on occasions and Toni Kroos dropped into a much more central role, but both were possibly the slowest attacking midfielders in the tournament. First-choice centre-backs Mats Hummels and Jerome Boateng are short of pace and were often left to fend for themselves at the back. Germany’s back-up goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, who has had his best season with Barcelona, was also left out despite Manuel Neuer’s (in pic) long absence due to a fracture foot leading up to the World Cup. constant marketing drive and sponsor photo shoots and its continuous demand to “bring back the fifth star” — a fifth world title.
When two DFB employees stormed the Sweden bench after Germany’s last-second 2-1 victory to celebrate and gesticulate at their opponents, it was indicative of their complacency suddenly being replaced by pure panic. Until that point the DFB had no clue a disaster was looming. Whether Loew decides to stay on, the post-World Cup Germany coach must clean house and rebuild the team from the same source as the 2014 World Cup-winning team.
The country’s outstanding youth work and its vast pool of Goals Conceded Top-scorer(s): Reus, Kroos (1) Finish: Bottom of Group F
Goals
2018 2014
Conceded Top-scorer: Mueller (4) Finish: Winners
Goals
2010
Conceded Top-scorer(s): Podolski, Mueller, Klose, Cacau, Ozil (1) Finish: Third
Goals
2006
Conceded Top-scorer: Klose (4) Finish: Third
Goals
2002
Conceded Top-scorer: Klose (5) Finish: Runners-up
MOSCOW Football is a simple game. Twentytwo men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans no longer always win. Previous version is confined to history.
talented players was the start of their decade-long exciting run in world football and it is there the coach must turn to, instead of players more interested in taking pictures of their latest sports cars or presidents.
: The internet turned cruel for Germany fans on Thursday as online mockery swept the globe following the defending champions’ shock World Cup elimination.
A stream of memes and jokes flooded social media after a stunning 2-0 defeat to South Korea condemned Die Mannschaft to their earliest exit in 80 years.
“Don’t mention the VAR,” was a common refrain, while Brazilian media gleefully took their revenge for Brazil’s 7-1 humiliation by Germany in 2014.
“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...” read a tweet from Fox Sports Brasil that ran to 272 characters.
“Germany’s fastest exit from Russia since 1943,” posted one user, while another tweeted a picture of Germany towels reserving all the seats on an empty plane.
Mexico fans were particularly delighted after South Korea’s last-gasp win allowed them to qualify for the last 16 behind Group F winners Sweden -— while Germany finished rock bottom. Aeromexico offered a 20 percent discount on flights to South Korea, tweeting an image of a plane with doctored “AeroCorea” livery and the slogan, “We love you Korea!”
Ryanair tweeted a picture of an unhappy Germany fan, offering “Loew fares” — a reference to German coach Joachim Loew.
One joke in German showed a supermarket check-out assistant asking Loew, “Do you collect points?” with the coach answering, “No.”
NEUER UNWILLING TO REVEL IN PAST GLORIES
Manuel Neuer believes it would be “bitter and pathetic” for Germany’s players to revel in their past glories in the aftermath of their dreadful 2018 World Cup campaign.
“We had it in our own hands, but we did not make it,” Neuer, who confirmed his intention to remain available for international selection, said. “To revel in the past brings us nothing, that’s bitter and pathetic. Even if it had worked today, there would have been halts in the knockout phase. We just did not deserve it.
“We did not really convince in any game. Of course it is very disappointing. “We need to analyse this and it has to be said very clearly that we just do not deserve it. Even after the three games, you have not seen in any game that there was a German team on the pitch, in front of which one has fear or respect.
“I’ve always tried to take responsibility, always tried to take the team. In the locker room, during training and on the pitch. Of course, I am also responsible for it.”
You can always go out early with a bad team, but not with a team like this one!! @DFB_Team Honest assessment must start !!! Leadership? Personality? Mentality?
MICHAEL BALLACK, former Germany captain
Honestly, all of us are very sad tonight. ANGELA MERKEL, Chancellor of Germany