After 15 years in charge, Jogi Low will soon leave his role as Germany’s head coach.
Low has been largely successful, but it’s been 7 years since Germany won the World Cup and,
while they did reach the semi-final of the last European Championship, they enter this one having
been eliminated in the group stage of Russia 2018 and after three years of disappointing results.
So, what happened to Germany?
One issue was an inevitable one. Germany have lost a lot of important players. Philipp Lahm,
Bastian Schweinsteiger, Sami Khedira and Mesut Ozil are gone,
so too are Jerome Boateng, Miroslav Klose, Mario Gotze and Lukas Podolski.
That describes a substantial loss of talent, but also leadership and experience.
Lahm and Klose both retired from international duty after 2014, as did Per Mertesacker.
Schweinsteiger would also depart in 2016 and, during the inquest that followed World Cup 2018,
Low admitted that Germany had arrived at the tournament with “a certain arrogance”
and the belief that “we would be able to react at the touch of a button when it all starts.”
They weren’t. Their football was slow and predictable,
they were hopelessly vulnerable to the counter-attack. It would be the first
time that Germany had been eliminated at the first stage of a World Cup since 1938.
The biggest discussion point would arrive nearly a year later when, in March 2019 and with Low
insisting that a new era had to begin, Mats Hummels, Thomas Muller and Jerome Boateng were
all told that they had no future with the national team, a decision which wasn’t greeted positively,
either by the players, their club, or some of their teammates.
Joshua Kimmich described the manner in which the players were told as ‘not okay’
and Bayern Munich professed themselves irritated by the timing of the announcement,
coming shortly before an important Champions League game against Liverpool.
“I'm a coach who thinks in two-year cycles”, Low said in retrospect.
“I think after 2018 it was necessary to have a change and to begin the process of
rebuilding. When you do that, you should never interrupt it and go in the opposite direction.”
That new era has been extremely difficult.
The low point came in 2020, with a 6-0 thrashing by Spain,
but the Germans failed to keep a clean sheet in any of their Nations League games that year,
conceding three times at home to both Turkey and Switzerland.
Writing for The Athletic in November 2020, shortly after that 6-0 humbling, Raphael Honigstein
reported that Low was having difficulty connecting with some of the younger players and that even
the more experienced members of his squad were struggling to cope with the negative atmosphere.
“Because results have been poor, every game feels very fraught” said a source.
“Players are afraid to make mistakes. There is a lot of fear on the pitch.”
Worse was to come in 2021 when, in their last competitive game ahead of Euro2020,
Low’s side lost 2-1 to North Macedonia in Germany at the end of March.
By then, he had already announced that he’d be leaving his job in the summer.
At around the same time, it was being reported in the German media that Hummels and Muller
would be reinstated in time for Euros – and both have been selected and are set to start.
It describes a change in Low’s thinking, and the new importance of the here and now.
But it also reflects the deficits in the squad.
Germany are without a recognised centre forward and although Muller is hardly a typical No.9,
his inclusion provides the side with a pressing pivot that they would otherwise lack.
Hummels’ return is more important. The defence has been short on quality,
continuity and confidence, his inclusion is hoped to bring stability to a unit
which has been chopped and changed and experimented with over and again, but without
significant improvement. Fundamentally, there is just a lack of ability in those positions.
There are clearly problems at centre-half, but also at full-back. Freiburg’s Christian
Gunter was called up to the squad seven years after his only previous cap and,
on the eve of the tournament, Joshua Kimmich was returned to his original right wing-back role,
as Low seemed to settle for a back-three.
So, Germany are talented and some of their players are among the very best in the world,
but 2021 finds them muddled in a strange state of transition
and vulnerable in a way that they’ve rarely been before.