It’s Germany’s flip to flirt with self destruction on the Euros

The cloudless blue skies arrived here this week, taking the German nation subconsciously right back to the sun-drenched days of 2006, when they came third in the World Cup on their own soil. Joshua Kimmich has jumped, fully clothed, into the team swimming pool. The players have had a doner kebab evening. A video of them juggling the ball, impressively, over the pool has gone viral.

The team’s sunny disposition is something coach Julian Nagelsmann has been working on day and night, with meals taking place around large tables and seating plans changing every day, all in the name of unity. The flags of amateur clubs and cities are dotted around the hotel, training ground and press room at their base in Herzogenaurach, near Nuremberg. ‘Believe. Be as one. All of Germany is behind you,’ is Nagelsmann’s all-consuming message.

It is the German form of psychological rehabilitation after two calamitous World Cups and the last 16 elimination by England at Euro 2020. ‘Nagelsmann radiates incredible motivation,’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commentator Christopher Meltzer wrote this week. Der Spiegel spoke of his ‘X-Factor.’

The mindset can only take a team so far, of course, and many have found it a rather unbearable wait for Saturday’s round of 16 match, after Switzerland came within minutes of consigning Germany to second place in the group, and an ensuing clash with Italy.

‘We don’t know how good we are. We don’t have the evidence,’ says Julia Schaus, in the Dusseldorf old town. ‘We might have to say, “exit in quarter finals is ok”. Remember we’re in recovery, here,’ says Franz Bruber, on the Cologne Cathedral steps. Both are discussing a Germany team which is only just on the road back to respectability.

Toni Kroos said in a podcast conversation with his brother this week that the national reaction to the 1-1 draw against the Swiss made it seem like a 3-0 defeat. ‘If the score isn’t 5-1 in every subsequent game, the euphoria dies down again,’ Kroos said. 

‘That doesn’t mean that the players should be praised for everything that happens. You have to address mistakes. But you also have to get the feeling that you didn’t just lose the game 3-0.’ Yes, to an extent, Germany have been feeling their own form of the current English angst.

That said, his nation sees something far more than a knock-out match with Denmark in Dortmund, which is a reprise of the 1992 final in Gothenburg – a 2-0 defeat for Germany. Der Spiegel has been reflecting on how the tournament is showing the Germans to be what they saw themselves as in that magical summer of 2006 – ‘cheerful, cosmopolitan hosts who celebrated a cheerful patriotism that was largely free of nationalism.’ Even though the Deutsche Bahn railway system has been chronically unreliable.

But the team’s destiny is in Nagelsmann’s hands now. Everyone waits, to see if he, aged 36 and the youngest manager in the tournament’s history, can be what Jurgen Klinsmann, then the 41-year-old coach, was for this country, 18 summers ago.

This tournament was prefaced with new, public discussion of how Nagelsmann’s relationship with Lena Wurzenberger, a former Bayern Munich reporter for Bild, Germany’s biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, had undermined trust between him and his players during his 22-month period as coach at the Allianz Arena.

He arrived there on the back of extraordinary success at Hoffenheim and then RB Leipzig, whom he took to the semi-finals of the Champions League as a 33-year-old coach. 

His habit of arriving at training on a skateboard and driving a motorcycle in town didn’t enhance his leadership credentials at the Allianz Arena, though it was because of the disintegration of Bayern’s football, rather than relationships of any kind, that he was sacked in March 2023. His tactics didn’t work, players complained that he overcomplicated training and he had an irritating habit of revealing private conversations with them in press conferences.

Nagelsmann appears to have learned from that chastening experience. German commentators observe how, having made bold sartorial choices back then, he has become more relatable in his current role. ‘His dress is more relaxed, his communication open, his passion on the sidelines almost palpable,’ says Der Spigel.

After a bumpy first few months at the national helm from last September, he has settled on a style that works for a German generation of real talent. They play a direct game, with little width, and they take risks. The Euros squad comprised surprise selections like Chris Führich and Maximilian Beier, who would ‘stress’ opponents, and omissions like Leon Goretzka and Mats Hummels, whose challenging personalities didn’t suit warming a bench.

Nagelsmann, much taken with the team ethic which saw Germany crowned 2023 world basketball champions, invited Gordon Herbert, the team’s Canadian coach, to Herzogenaurach at the start of the tournament. ‘Every team needs pigs and racehorses,’ Herbert explained recently. ‘Pigs do the dirty work but they don’t need to shine. Racehorses are the elite players who make the difference.’ Nagelsmann’s racehorses are the attacking Florian Wirtz and Jamal Musiala; ‘Wusiala’ as they’ve become known.

‘Julian gave a great speech when we first got together,’ observed Rudi Völler, German FA sporting director, whose legendary status and gruff, old-school style has enhanced the national team’s popularity. ‘He talked to the players about not being crushed by the pressure and spoke of it being a privilege to experience that pressure.’

The squad and the system are still relatively untested. Only seven months ago, this nation was losing to Turkey and Austria. That’s why the draw against Switzerland has been a source of angst. The excellent Murat Yakin and Manuel Akanji, for the Swiss, managed to disrupt Germany’s game without opting for a complete retreat. Central defender Jonathan Tah and striker Kai Havertz struggled and the team seemed to drift.

Many observed how the stands became shrouded in silence for the last quarter of the first half in Frankfurt, as anxiety quickly set in. It’s not gone without notice here, incidentally, that the fans of many countries are making more noise than the Germans. One report this week featured a small fan group called AG Stimmung (‘Atmosphere’) operating at Germany games, which has set itself the goal of improving support for the national team. ‘How German!’ the German correspondent reporting this observed.

The hope is that last Sunday in Frankfurt was a blip, though all week the nation has been hanging on medical bulletins about Antonio Rudiger, who strained a hamstring that night. With Tah suspended after picking up his second yellow card, Dortmund’s talented, though unpredictable, Nico Schlotterbeck is likely to start. National optimism has not been hugely enhanced by old defensive stalwart Berti Vogts, manager of the team beaten by the Danes in ’92, reminding everyone how tough the current Denmark side will be.

Before kick-off in Dortmund on Saturday, the song ‘Erfolg ist kein Gluck’ (‘Success is not Luck’) by the rapper Kontra K, will be played. Its popularity with Nagelsmann and the team stems back to difficult days last autumn, when he had it played in the background during training, on the team bus and in training, for motivational purposes. It’s become their anthem and Nagelsmann, needless to say, has had the rapper up to Herzogenaurach to meet the players.

‘Nothing is for nothing, you have to walk every inch yourself,’ the lyric runs.

‘Because nothing will come by itself.

‘Motivated, the tunnel vision to the goal.

‘Because when, if not now and who, if not us?’

The German nation will know soon enough.