Flick’s promise turned out to be a nightmare for him and his country.
Germany experienced an exceptional sports day on September 10, 2023. The basketball team defeated Serbia for the first time in its history to win the World Cup, which was overshadowed by the news that the soccer team’s coach, Hansi Flick, had been fired. As a historical precedent for the country.
For the first time since the 1920s, a coach has been sacked from coaching the German national team, and the matter comes after an awkward friendly defeat against Japan as part of the team’s preparations to host Euro 2024 next summer. The loss was not the first but the last in a five-match streak in which the Germans had lost four. Multiple times and a draw with Ukraine, against whom? Colombia, Poland and Belgium.
The German national team has not known many setbacks throughout its successful career, but since the end of the generation that won the 2014 World Cup, crushing Brazil to seven, the team has entered an unfair slump considering the skills available. A league that builds legendary players, infrastructure and talent constantly.
The 2018 World Cup and Euro 2020 failures have been linked to Joachim Löw and his inability to renew his ideas. The idea of replacing him with Hans Flick was logical and welcomed by all, as he was a man of three points. Bayern, and is familiar with the national team due to a previous stint as an assistant with Löw, but things did not go the right way. .
The former Bayern coach played 25 matches with the Germans, winning only 12 matches, drawing seven and losing six, a percentage that does not suit a team like Germany. And in the all-important Test in Qatar in 2022, the team failed miserably. They were eliminated from the World Cup with a loss to Japan, who became the symbol of the black animal in that era.
The current period is similar to what the German national team went through after the 1998 World Cup and the end of the golden generation of German Klinsmann, Lothar Matthäus and Oliver Bierhoff. Then the team entered the void and Euro 2000 and 2004, until the 2006 World Cup, which it hosted and Klinsmann provided a new, young generation, which reached the semi-finals, losing to the defending champions. Italy, Euro 2008, continued the development by reaching the final of the semi-finals. World Cup in 2010, and European Nations in 2012, all the way to lifting the Gold Cup in Brazil in 2014.
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Strangely, the difference between this generation and the current one is that there is no shortage of stars, whether they are experienced like Marc-Andre der Stegen, Leroy Sane and Josiah Kimmich or youngsters like Florian Wirtz and Jamal Musiala. And Flick also proved himself to be one of the best coaches of the current generation with Bayern, unlike back then when Germany suffered from a midlife era devoid of big names, and poor quality coaches cost the team dearly following the tenure of Berti Vogts.
The German federation’s tough choice to sack Flick nine months before the Euros seems right in light of the coach’s failure to find solutions, and promises he made in September after the last international break in June would be different. It happened, but in a disastrous way, with a scandalous defeat to Japan that was testament to his technical inability to make a difference.
The German national team do not have many solutions to replace Flick, and it looks like they will be forced to pay Bayern Munich €15 million to get the best player available, Julian Nagelsmann. He suffered greatly to win the European Championship in a few months, but if the German newspaper has taught us anything, it’s that impossible is not German, and anyone who attended 2002 Oliver Kahn, Ballack, Christian Sage, Ramilov and Frings knew it well!
