Could it be German Federal Captain Stefan Kuntz? Can a person be appointed to head the German national team who once left a club team during the season because he feels tired? Duck, or is it a serious assumption to throw the name of Lothar Matthäus into a hat? These issues have occupied the whole of Germany since Tuesday.
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Who will be the eleventh German football federal captain? This is what German football fans have been guessing since Tuesday afternoon. This time, he’s not thinking about the eleventh member of a football team in a half-country, but a new person joining a special 10-member company.
10 players from the non-simultaneous football teams Nerz, Herberger, Schön, Derwall, Beckenbauer, Vogts, Ribbeck, Völler, Klinsmann and Löw, but also the professionals who have managed the German national team since football became international. As a federal captain, or who did not have a coaching degree, they are team leaders. In nearly 100 years, so many captains have sat on the German bench, and this also indicates that the four-time World Cup winner is never planning for the short term.
So obviously they are seriously considering who will be next. Ever since Löw turned out, successors have been mentioned in many forums, and information from the same portals is built on top of each other, yet it’s strange that only a few names revolve around each other. If only German candidates are involved, there really isn’t much choice. Because there is a German coaching society in the process of a serious generational change. Several successful, charismatic trainers have aged out and retired recently who would have been worthy of the position.
The situation is a bit reversed, like Berti Vogts after his ugly fall at the 1998 World Cup. Because they were great coaches back then, but not very many quality football players. Back then, it was hard to find a captain because the best of the age didn’t want to “burn”. Eventually, poor Erich Ribbeck put his head in the loop on the gallows and proved at the 2000 European Championships that those who did not take the role were right. He became the only captain out of the 10 so far who could not win a medal at a world competition. And after his fall, no one really dared to take on the high-risk task.
Ottmar Hitzfeld, who won the Champions League with both Dortmund and Bayern, would have been the ideal solution, but despite being capacified almost on his knees, he did not stand under the rope. Jupp Heynckes was not as successful at the time as he was later, but he did not ask for this honor either. Udo Lattek was relatively old at the time, Dettmar Cramer was even older, Otto Rehhagel was more of a Greek captain, and Felix Magath’s “sadistic tendencies” were more likely to be experienced as club coaches. Professionally, it would probably have been the perfect solution, it would have solved the problem for many years.Maybe until German football scrambled out of the pothole.But before his appointment it turned out that he was a drug user and even trafficked and even running girls also busy in his spare time. Thus, after Ribbeck, it was again only a temporary assignment, but this was solved so well by the very popular Rudi Völler that he was able to fight for the final at the 2002 World Cup with a picked-up team.
But in the long run, he didn’t take it either, so after another search, Jürgen Klinsmann, who was Völler’s co-fellow in the 1990 world championship team, took over. His involvement would have brought a complete collapse if they had not been joined by Joachim Löw, who understood his profession. And after the departure of “Internet Captain” Klinsmann in 2006, he stepped forward by a line and has been on his way to Löw ever since. After the Summer European Championships, however, it ends and all the coaches mentioned have retired, some of them no longer alive. A new generation has grown up, but all they have to say about their success is that the last time the German team won the Europa League / UEFA Cup in 1997 (with a Dutch coach, Huub Stevens sitting on the bench), and German guards made it to the BL finals with the following coaches. in the millennium: Ottmar Hitzfeld, Klaus Toppmöller, Louis van Gaal (Netherlands), Jupp Heynckes, Jürgen Klopp, Hansi Flick. Furthermore, Thomas Tuchel took PSG to the BL final last year.
With that, we have arrived today! Because Klopp, Flick, Stefan Kuntz, who manages the supply, and, if we look strictly at professional qualities, Ralf Rangnick and Julian Nagelsmann have a really good chance of taking the post.
The latter, CoR Coach Leipzig, can be ruled out immediately because of his age, because it is unthinkable for a 33-year-old man to hold this position. If his development becomes as unbroken as it has been in recent years, he could be the twelfth captain. But the 10-15 (-20) years in front of him have to be solved by then.
Ralf Rangnick will be 63 in the summer (Löw is now 61), he certainly can’t take too long. What’s more, mentally he hadn’t been completely okay for 10 years, as he left Schalke’s bench during the season for the original reason he was tired. Undoubtedly, the work of a captain requires a different kind of man than he did at a club, and he is very good in analyzes and analyzes. That’s why the nickname “professor” has been hung on him. He may not be able to cope with the stress of leading a national team, but it is certain that if he chooses, the association’s marketers can look for a mineral water company (also) as a sponsor. He drinks 5 liters of water a day with his players, in addition to his other indecent headshots, something like cell regeneration.
Jürgen Klopp has been considered by everyone as a potential candidate for captain ever since he jumped on the coaching carousel. At first “good duma”, because of his charming appearance, later because of his success with Dortmund. For him, things worked a little the other way around for most coaches who worked first and then taught them to perform. But this is the 21st century, much more important here. to sell the product than to manufacture it well.In any case, Klopp is now among the best in “production” and, of course, he was the first to be asked the question of succession, to which he replied so “clumsily”: I still have three years left on my Liverpool contract. Clean line. If you sign a contract, you’re trying to act in the spirit of it, aren’t you? “
It’s a really clear speech to which one of the 10 former captains, Rudi Völler, added, “Klopp is one of the few coaches who decides for himself when he wants to be a federal captain.”
The Liverpool master is currently 53 years old, so he still has time, but if he doesn’t play chess well, he could be at most a Greek captain.
As Bayern’s coach, Hansi Flick, who won six major trophies in a year, would be a logical choice because five of the nine captain changes so far have been taken over by a former staff member (second coach). This is how Sepp Herberger, Helmut Schön, Jupp Derwall, Berti Vogts and Jogi Löw himself came into this position. And he was helped by Flick from 2006 to 2014. At the 2008 European Championships, when Löw was pushed off the bench in the group match against Austria and could not be there due to his ban in the quarterfinals against Portugal, Flick replaced him perfectly. However, at the moment, the chariot at Bayern is very much running with it. You know, it’s not certain that his name will be mentioned later, yet he’s loyal to his current breadwinners, because he said: I know exactly what it means to work at Bayern, and I have no reason to think about any other job right now. “
The situation seems to be similar to what happened around that millennium. That is, there is no candidate at the first moment who would like to do it, he is professionally fit, and the association thinks of him as well.
Or there is one: Stefan Kuntz. He is an employee of the association and has been working with age-appropriate teams for years. From 1983 to 1999, he played in 449 Bundeliga1 matches, scoring 179 goals. He has been in the national team 25 times, played five matches (out of six) in the 1996 European Championship team, in the semi-finals he scored the only goal of the German national team in 120 minutes and then scored in the 11th duel. He holds an almost unbelievable record: he was a 20-time winning national team member, a 5-time tie and never got out of the national team jersey.
Such is said to have been born a winner. And he also capitalized on this mentality as a youth coach: in 2017, he won the U21 World Cup with his sons. In his final against Spain, he played for Serge Gnabry, Niklas Stark, Mitchel Weiser, Max Meyer, Maximilian Arnold, Levin Öztunali.
Lothar Matthäus?
Of course, the name of the former legend of Bayern Munich, Lothar Matthäus, also arose in the large German captain’s circle. Even Hertha’s Hungarian coach, Pál Dárdai, spoke on this issue. “He’s an excellent professional and he’s great at motivating. He treats the people around him well and has a lot of experience with football, so it’s possible to be able to do great things in an environment like this. He is a real winner, “said Dárdai. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the German federation would see the ideal solution in Lothar Matthäus. we also had a federal captain, and the fact that his name also came up as a candidate for captain suggests that there are those in Germany who see fantasy in him.-
The Germans like to have the national team of the future build on a successful age-matched team, and there is no more convenient solution than to entrust a coach who has worked with them at a young age. That is, if the new federal captain were to sit down tomorrow, it would certainly be called Stefan Kuntz. However, there is still time to decide, as the current one, Joachim Löw, will remain in office until the end of the European Championships.
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