If a head coach can now be found who will lead Germany to success in next summer’s home games, his statue will not be low, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen Sports journalist
It’s been like forever since the German national football team played in the Confederations Cup in the summer of 2017, the national team tournament between the prestigious competitions.
Germany won the tournament played in Russia. In the same summer, the country’s under-21 national team celebrated European Championship gold. The men’s A national team went undefeated in the World Cup qualifiers and secured their place in the final tournament in autumn 2017 with a clean streak of 10 wins. What would stop this train?
On June 29, 2017, Germany played the semi-final of the Confederations Cup in Sochi and beat Mexico. The commentator of Swedish TV looked for an explanation for the dominance from the level of the countries’ federations.
– Germany has had nine head coaches since 1950, Mexico 35.
Reluctant washed
On Tuesday of last week, one of these nine head coaches would reluctantly pull on the head coach’s mantle once more. The graying sports director of the association, the attacking legend Rudi Völler symbolizes a time when football was really a game where 22 men ran for 90 minutes and in the end Germany won.
On Tuesday night in Dortmund, the victory felt like a miracle. France, the number one European team of the past decade, fell 2–1. Germany had won the international match for the last time almost half a year earlier.
The situation is unfathomable when there is less than a year until the European Championships.
Long-term action
The sentence of the Swedish narrator quoted above says that Germany’s success – from 1966 to 2016 three World Cup golds, three silvers, three bronzes, three European Championship golds, three silvers, three bronzes – is largely explained by the fact that small bumps and setbacks have not slowed down . Work peace has been granted, the process has been respected.
When the Canadian-Finnish by Gordon Herbert the head coached German national basketball team won the World Cup final in Manila on Sunday in Serbia, at the same time the football association did something that was never imagined to happen.
Saturday’s 1-4 loss to Japan, who had already humiliated Germany in the World Cup in Qatar, turned off Mersu’s lights. Sports director Völler had the honor to tell Hansi to Flickthat this would become a figure in history – the first ever fired Die Mannschaft head coach.
The great national basketball team celebrated with its fans, the football association was stared at. Germany had gained a new number one institution for its sport.
On the edge of the abyss
If Völler really only pulled Tuesday’s oxygen-giving France match, he will get the same winning percentage, one hundred, from this head coach Olli Huttunen recently in Finland.
It says a lot that when the victory had to tear on the edge of the abyss, its guarantor was the totem of the previous super generation Thomas Müller.
The German national football team is a giant in the entire global sports history. Now many top coaches seem to press the red button on their phones when the number of Völler, who is wearing recruiting pants, flashes on the screen.
The association does not rule out even foreign head coach candidates. During Völler’s playing years, and long after them, this would have been sacrilege even as a mere thought game.
Will 2006 repeat itself?
When Germany organized the last time the prestigious competition, the World Cup final tournament in 2006, there were several humiliations in the prestigious competition. The home games were a complete image and sporting success and a springboard for a decade of new glory.
Repeating this at the EC home games in 2024 requires a miracle. But if Völler continued, he would know how to do a miracle after all.
A team of Germany’s level should never have advanced to the World Cup finals in 2002, but that’s how Völler and his crew got there.
When I interviewed the charismatic Lord on the subject in Leverkusen 2010, he told me what might save Germany next summer as well:
– We weren’t really the second best team in the 2002 Games, but we managed to finish second in the tournament. They are two different things.
Pekka Holopainen
The author is a columnist based in Pori and the only sports reporter who has been selected as Journalist of the Year in Finland.
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