Football Forensics: What has gone wrong in this Tournament?

When Jürgen Klinsmann stepped down after the World Cup 2006, Jogi Löw did a great job gradually refining and improving the team he had put together with Klinsmann. Germany continued to play aggressive attacking football throughout the qualifiers - even in meaningless friendlies - and Löw soon had amassed one of the best track records of any German national team coach. Germany were the first of all teams to qualify for the Euros and were favourites to win it. Yet, overall this tournament was a bit of a set back, as the team failed to emulate the high standard of the qualifiers. So it’s time to play the blame game and do some finger pointing.

The Defence was a mess.
If there was any consistency in this German team, it was the consistently bad defence. It’s worth noting that Germany had overcome their shaky defence during the World Cup in 2006 and it stayed this way throughout the Euro qualifiers. In fact, the defence survived several injuries with completely new central defender or full back pairings without too much trouble. Something or better someone must have mixed it all up.

On the one hand you had Jens Lehmann in goal, who had been benched by Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, and who had no real match practise going into the tournament. Ahead of the Euros I thought that it might be too late to switch to another goalkeeper, because a keeper and his back-line have to click and Lehmann had been in goal for the German national team throughout 2007/2008. But in the first minutes of the game against Poland you could see that the two elements weren’t clicking. Both Lehmann and Mertesacker were going for the same ball, gifting Jacek Krzynowek a golden opportunity to take an early lead. One month later Lehmann was going for the same ball Philipp Lahm looked like he had under control. Lahm decelerated and Torres scored the winner. So, I was proven wrong. Apart from that, he wasn’t a confident and calming factor in games, which didn’t go Germany’s way. When the defence was shaky and erratic he was shaky and erratic too - except for the final.

Then there was Christoph Metzelder, who is a good defender when he’s in form and fit. The problem was, that he came straight from a five month injury spell and was decidedly unfit in the pre-tournament friendlies and it remained the same in the group stage. Jogi Löw took a gamble on Metzelder, hoping he would reach his peak in time for the later stages of the tournament, but all he got was another destabilising element in his defence.

Marcell Jansen on the left flank was another player, who could easily be identified as a weak link, but there was something wrong with that left flank in general. You might come to the conclusion that Philipp Lahm is a bad defender after watching the Turkey and Spain match, but in the previous games he was still one of Germany’s best players. Something messed with his form curve here as well. It definitely didn’t help that Lukas Podolski played in midfield. If he has a future on that position in the national team, then he needs to learn to back-track and defend. Jansen and Lahm were confronted with much more traffic coming their way, so they might even be excused a little bit. Friedrich was - like in the World Cup 2006 - OK at the back but ineffective and uninspired going forward.

Going from 4-4-2 to 4-2-3-1 was not a stroke of genius.
While the change from a 4-4-2 to a 4-2-3-1 formation had been hailed after Germany managed to overcome Portugal, it mostly served to close gaping holes in the defence. It probably also had a psychological placebo effect on the team. Michael Ballack might have felt that it freed him to run the midfield more, but in reality he covered every inch of the pitch in a 4-4-2 formation just like he had to carry out a lot of defensive duties in the new 4-2-3-1 formation as well. 4-4-2 worked well throughout the World Cup in 2006 and the Euro qualifiers and Ballack was comfortable in it. With a more confident defence, there wouldn’t have been a need to try and patch things with an extra midfielder, who often failed to fit in when it came to keeping possession and creating chances (Hitzelsperger against Portugal, Rolfes against Turkey and Hitzelsperger again against Spain). So the overall impact and involvement of the extra midfielder was limited and in the end he couldn’t stop the defence from being a disaster either. Miroslav Klose is definitely not the kind of player who can act as a lone striker. It sort of worked out sometimes because he is strong in the air, allowing him to receive crosses from Podolski, Lahm or Schweinsteiger but he is much more effective when he has a partner to play with. Klose can’t keep the ball and he can’t fight for the ball, so passes from the midfield to him were usually doomed before they even got near Klose. Germany were completely reduced to the flanks, because a player was missing in the centre and neither of the two defensive midfielders were involved enough in the offence to make anything happen here either. In short, bad decision making or nervous or insecure decision making by Jogi Löw. I’m convinced that we’ll see a 4-4-2 formation again going into the World Cup qualifiers, with everybody pretending this 4-2-3-1 experiment never happened.

The team couldn’t cope mentally.
And the word team includes the coaching staff. This is probably a point, which is a bit all-encompassing and also played a part in all the other things mentioned in this post. It was just too obvious that the team wasn’t ready when they went into the match against Croatia and Turkey. There was a lethargic mental slowness about this side, which allowed, on paper, inferior opponents to dominate the match. In fact they were able to completely unsettle the team ending in players playing lots of bad and nervous passes. Even in matches Germany seemed to have under control, it was easy to turn things around. Germany started into the match against Poland in a great aggressive manner, which I thought was a promising sign of things to come over the next few weeks. Unfortunately what happened after 35 minutes was closer to the truth. From the end of the first half right into the second half, Poland had taken the game away from Germany. It wasn’t until Poland’s attacks got more desperate later in the second half, when Germany got enough space again to put together a few good attacking moves. When Jogi Löw talked about the “winning mentality” of his side after the Turkey match, he didn’t so much acknowledge the cliché about German football, but rather tried to work his psychological toolbox, to give his team confidence and self-believe ahead of the final, but it didn’t really work out, or rather it worked for like 15 minutes.

How much of a difference it can make, to find the key to a player’s psyche was best exemplified by Bastian Schweinsteiger. He was out of form and lost his place in the starting XI to Lukas Podolski. He was reduced to substitute performances and eventually got himself sent off against Croatia. He received a lot of criticism afterwards and Jogi Löw publicly announced that Schweinsteiger owed it to the team, to make up for his mistake. What followed was a man of the match performance against Portugal.

But Jogi Löw didn’t seem to be able to find a key to the team as a whole. On top of that, he probably underestimated the pressure of being in charge of the national team during a major tournament. He made an unusual amount of questionable decisions. His substitutions mostly failed to have any impact. He did well to replace the weakest performer in every match, but in situations where he needed to take risks, he feared the potential consequences. He basically admitted that it would have made sense to revert to 4-4-2 during the Turkey match, but then again thought it could harm the midfield, so he ended up doing nothing. His overall squad selection left a bit of a bitter after taste. He put all his trust in experienced players, even if this experience went by the name of David Odonkor or came fresh from a long injury spell. This must have been frustrating for a those players, who didn’t get a chance.

So, how could you expect Löw to give his team the mental edge, when he was missing it himself?

2007/2008 wasn’t kind to the players.
I’ve spent the better part of this post lamenting details, which by and large could be blamed on the coach. In his defence though, it’s worth pointing out, that last season was a mixed bag for a lot of players. Mario Gomez was a rare exception - a player who was in excellent form throughout the season but a complete flop during the tournament. But a lot of other players had to deal with serious injuries, sidelining them for months, or a serious form crisis which often saw them benched in their respective clubs. This is not an ideal situation going into a tournament and the good karma of the national team can’t make up for everything.

Conclusion
So, to wrap this post up: would a 4-4-2 playing German national team with the right attitude, an in-form Gomez and a solid defence been able to win the Euros? Potentially yes, but not necessarily, as Spain would have still been a tough team to beat. But we could be much more optimistic looking ahead to the qualifiers and the World Cup. Because this team has an excellent future, so it’s a bit unfortunate that we now have to worry about all those little flaws, which need to get ironed out in time for the World Cup.