Wednesday November 18, 2020
By Tobias Nordmann
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If the pandemic allows, a European football championship will be held next year. The German team actually wants to play a good role in that. But the slight progress recently is shattered in the Nations League of Spain.
On Tuesday evening, Joachim Löw couldn’t answer the question of whether he is worried about his job. The national coach explained that it wasn’t possible that spontaneously. And anyway you have to confront other people with this topic anyway. Oliver Bierhoff would be a suitable candidate. And so he was then asked whether he still trusts the national coach – despite the deserved 0: 6 clap in the group final of the Nations League against Spain.
Yes, affirmed the shocked DFB director on ARD. He reiterated his conviction in Löw’s work on Tuesday for the second time. The first time he’d done it before the game. It was an urgent need to classify his sentence, which was only made to the “FAZ” on Monday and raised as a national heading, that the coach had to be measured by results. They would like to have been divorced at the DFB with a good one from this complicated year. Now they take nothing less than the maximum heaviest mortgage with them in the EM preparation.
If only the result of the shame of Seville were decisive for the future of Löw, then this would no longer lie with the German Football Association. The German team played too disastrously, lifeless, leaderless. On the pitch, but also on the sidelines. Because the eternal national coach endured the cruelty of his team, which came very close to the currently best possible (of the regular players only the greedy and really indispensable Joshua Kimmich was missing), with an astonishing indifference. Fighting spirit, fire, passion? Under dark clouds.
Confidence will continue to decline
Now Löw will know that this game won’t kick him out of office. But the 60-year-old will also have a very specific idea that the mood around the national team will continue to be directed against him. Even after the jerky three-act international match in October, a survey had shown that only four percent of those questioned still have total confidence in him. In contrast, around five weeks ago, 76 percent thought Löw was the wrong man on the nation’s most important coaching chair.
You don’t have to be a demoscopist to see that these polls will worsen again. Although the pollster genre suffered officially damage in the course of the bizarre US election. So be it. Regardless of the analysis that Bierhoff and Löw want to carry out after the debacle, the management responsibility for the DFB-Elf will not change. The director had announced that he wanted to and will go with the coach to the EM.
But despite all the affirmations, Bierhoff will not be able to control the discussions about Löw. Criticism of criticism, as he recently explained in a long monologue, would hardly meet with understanding. This time, the discussions will take off with plenty of momentum. In all the contributions to the last international match of the year, but even more so when all sorts of experts sit together again in their discussion groups at the weekend or publish their sharp columns. Six goals against, however, also brutally strong and playful Spaniards, which are converted into six arguments against Löw in the rounds and columns.
All weaknesses disclosed
The discussion will be about the defensive vulnerability, about the system, about Toni Kroos and its dynamic value for the team, about the opaque game idea. About the development the team under Löw has actually taken in this difficult year of the pandemic. Especially compared to the top nations around France and Spain. Or with the talented Englishmen.
And of course the hierarchy of this silent troop is being debated with great heat. Which is closely interwoven with the names Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels and Jérôme Boateng. Whenever the national team does not deliver what meets the (demanding) national expectations, this tiresome return issue flares up for those who were booted by Löw. In urgent concern for the team, the horrified Bastian Schweinsteiger (expert on ARD) and Mesut Özil nominated the Bavarian giant Boateng on Tuesday. Negotiations about Müller and Hummels have been going on for longer and more intensively – without Löw.
Whether this will actually falter, given the helpless performance in Seville, for which Serge Gnabry no longer even wanted to look for excuses, seems possible again, if not likely. Once again Löw said: “We have to assess the situation at the right time. Confidence in our players is not completely shaken now. We have to draw the right conclusions.” He now has a good four months to do it, and an international match is not due again until March 24th or 25th. There are months in which Löw doesn’t have to worry about his job despite all the debates and comments. This is all the more acute if neither the performance nor the result are correct in the spring.
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