The German national team fired its head coach before the home European Championship

Hansi Flick went down in the history of German football as the first coach of his main team to be fired from a prestigious post without waiting for the end of his contract or at least the next top tournament. Flick, whose debut competition as Germany coach was last year’s failed Qatari World Cup, was finished off by their disastrous results in friendly matches played in recent months by the hosts of next year’s European Championship. The last straw was the devastating loss to the Japanese, who had annoyed the German team back in Qatar.

The German Football Association (DFB) has announced the dismissal of Hansi Flick as head coach of the German national team. DFB President Bernd Neuendorf, commenting on it, called such a step “inevitable.” He explained it by the need to find “new impetus” for the national team against the backdrop of “fresh disappointing results.” She will need the impulse primarily next summer. It is Germany that will host the next European Championship in 2024, and its national team, as host, is exempt from qualifying for it. Flick’s last match as coach of the Germans, therefore, turned out to be a friendly game on Saturday, in which they were surprisingly easily defeated by the Japanese – 4:1.

Thanks to this decision, Hansi Flick entered – or, one might say, got himself into – the history of German football. The fact is that its leaders are traditionally distinguished by exceptional patience towards those who are trusted with the national team. It’s hard to believe, but before Flick, only ten specialists worked with her for almost a full century, and none of his predecessors were formally dismissed from their posts: each left at the end of the contract after the completion of the next cycle, crowned with a top tournament. And, for example, the fact that his predecessor Joachim Löw lasted in office for as much as 15 years – a colossal period by the standards of other leading teams – did not particularly surprise anyone, given German habits and traditions.

Löw left the German team after the 2021 European Championships. On it, she was unable to rehabilitate herself for the disaster that stuck in the memory of German fans. It happened at the world championship in Russia in 2018. On it, the Germans were eliminated after the group stage. And their inexpressive performance at the continental championship with a defeat in the 1/8 finals from the British only emphasized the desirability of personnel and stylistic changes for the giant who had lost its power and stability.

Hansi Flick, who signed a three-year contract with the DFB, experienced and full of ideas, with experience as Löw’s assistant, seemed in this sense a completely logical choice. Just in 2020, he won the Champions League with Bayern, he was named the best football coach based on its results by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and a number of respected publications and structures. Flick, now 58, has had an encouraging start to this phase of his career. The German national team immediately went on an unbeaten streak of ten matches with him, and qualified for the 2022 World Cup extremely easily.

However, then there were misfires – both in the League of Nations and, most importantly, at the world championship. In Qatar at the end of last year, the Germans were embarrassed in the opening match of the group round, losing 1:2 to the Japanese, then they drew 1:1 with the other favorites of the quartet, the Spaniards, and were again eliminated before the play-offs, despite winning 4:2 – among the Costa Ricans. And German football experts harshly criticized Hansi Flick for, say, throwing around in search of the optimal base option and ineffective substitutions. But DFB remained true to itself and retained the coach in order to part with him at a time when it seemed that there were no compelling reasons for a quick separation. After all, the German national team won’t face tournament disaster for another year and a half.

But the results of friendly matches mentioned by Bernd Neuendorf are really so amazing that it is impossible not to pay attention to them. The German team opened this year with success in the match with the Peruvians. But in the five matches that the Germans played after him, they lost four times (before the Japanese – to the Belgians, Poles and Colombians), ending amicably with the Ukrainians. Previously, it was impossible to imagine that a football giant, no matter what form it was in, could produce such a bad series. At the same time, Hansi Flick did not even have the traditional justification for such situations at hand in the form of large-scale experiments with the composition for the sake of “upgrading” the team. In the same meeting with the Japanese, it was formed mostly from those players who had been in the national team a long time ago – such as Ilkay Gundogan, Joshua Kimmich, Kai Havertz, Leroy Zanet, Antonio Rudiger, Serge Gnabry, Niklas Sule.

The DFB said Germany will be led by a coaching triumvirate in its upcoming friendly on Tuesday against Qatari World Cup finalists France, including legend Rudi Völler, now the team’s sporting director, as well as Hannes Wolf and Sandro Wagner. But Hansi Flick’s successor is not among them. Meanwhile, Bild and a number of other sources have no doubt that the DFB has already identified a priority candidate. He is Julian Nagelsmann, whose previous place of work was also Bayern. True, Nagelsmann was kicked out of the Munich club back in March. Media resources predicting his appointment clarify that the DFB, before formalizing an agreement with him, must wait until some contractual obligations that still remain in force, despite the dismissal, between Julian Nagelsmann and Bayern are settled.

Alexey Dospehov