Complacency killed German WCup hopes
Print Edition
Charts, graphs and statistical analysis will not explain Germany’s shock World Cup exit. The reason lies not in numbers but in German football’s complacency in recent years.
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 its 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 UEFA Champions League round of 16. This season it was just one.
Back in 2013, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund played out an all-German UCL 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 just Bayern. The reasons for this are simple: money.
The Bundesliga is eager to highlight its financial spurt but that boom has also brought with it a one-sided and boring competition where Bayern always wins.
The lack of league competition, with the cash-rich DFB refusing to intervene, has meant that German players have seriously lost their competitive edge.
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, 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’.
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 winners.
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