The DFB squad needs the big cut after the Spain debacle

Wo It is possible that there was already an unmasking truth in this first sentence, pronounced in a microphone after the black and deep night in Seville. It wasn’t one of the bitterest defeats of his career, Toni Kroos said in response to the reporter’s question, and certainly one of the biggest.

Sure, it wasn’t about the title and silverware, but everyone who experienced this 6-0 draw must have realized that something completely different, perhaps even bigger, was at stake. In the current situation of the national team, what could be more bitter than being led into the arena like this German team on Tuesday night? So that no one could remember anything like that because it was over 90 years ago?

At the end of a period of international matches that began with Oliver Bierhoff’s image of the “dark cloud” on the team, which he only linked to the atmosphere, even the national team is sporting like a naked man in a storm, like a beautiful project. time with a good weather coach who thinks in general but – once again – found no answer to what really happened on the pitch. One thing is certain: almost two and a half years after the preliminary round of the World Cup in Russia, the 2014 world champion is not only at a low point, but also facing anguishing questions. What if two and a half years have been wasted on German football and can it continue like this?

After the game, the calls for the marginalized world champions are loud again. It was understandable, especially considering the lack of words and the indifference with which the team and the coach had suffered this defeat. Joachim Löw will carry this question with him as a thunderous echo over the coming weeks and months, but it would be a mistake to believe that the presence of Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels or Jerome Boateng alone can give this team the inner cohesion it needed. needs.

Regardless of the question of what condition the three will be in next spring and summer: after all that the coach of the national team has built in terms of structure and hierarchy, it is difficult to imagine that a return would be possible without doing anything else Put something to lose: for those who Löw counted on and who were so happy to accept this role, it would be a defeat after a defeat – and in relation to a national team manager who is deprived of his credibility, it would not be a good basis for a productive working atmosphere. In other words: a small cut would hardly make sense without the large one. The national team is trapped in the complications in which the association found itself clinging to Löw after the 2018 World Cup.

The Seville disaster is not just about Löw’s defeat, it cannot change the structural imbalance that characterizes German football at the top. But never before has it been as clear as Tuesday night that it doesn’t give impulses when they are needed most – a huge difference for Luis Enrique, who had tailored his squad so precisely for this match that the Germans fared as a stunned bull. the Seville bullring has collapsed. For Löw it must have been a bitter punchline that the longtime role model had given him this deep stab – at a time when Spain was thought to have long since ceased to exist.