Late on Saturday night, only one high-profile official of the German Football Association (DFB) came out to back the national team manager. It was Hansi Flick himself.
“We’re doing a good job and I believe I’m the right coach for the team,” the 58-year-old said, his defiant tone bordering on delusional.
The next day, Flick took training and vowed to fight on. He was still there but, in reality, he was already already gone. Germany were once again so clueless in possession, so porous in defence and so obviously low on cohesion in the 4-1 defeat against Japan in Wolfsburg that Flick couldn’t possibly stay in the job any longer.
Flick oversees training on Sunday (Swen Pfortner via Getty Images)
“Unfortunately we have to assess today that we cannot go on like this,” sporting director Rudi Voller was quoted in the FA’s press release. The 63-year-old will take charge for Tuesday’s friendly against France before a successor will get appointed. Whoever comes in next — Matthias Sammer, Julian Nagelsmann or Oliver Glasner are the main contenders — can then start with a clean slate next month.
Flick, whose attempt to inspire his men in Qatar with a documentary on a flock of grey geese (“By working together, they can fly 70 per cent more!”) fell as painfully flat as his various tactical ploys, finished his 29-month spell as a historical one-off. He was be the first Germany manager to be fired.
Even the notoriously forgiving DFB could no longer look past a run of horrific results that pointed to the mother of all embarrassments as hosts of next year’s European Championship unless there was a change at the helm.
Having been given the benefit of the doubt after the World Cup group-stage exit, Flick completely bungled the restart, winning just one game (2-0 against Peru) and losing four since. He experimented with formations, played the tough guy by leaving out a few big names — Serge Gnabry, Leroy Sane, Niklas Sule, Leon Goretzka — and appointed a new captain in Ilkay Gundogan, but the team never came any closer to understanding what they were supposed to look and play like.
By opening the dressing room doors to Amazon during the World Cup, Flick also made a huge mistake.
The Qatar documentary, released with malicious perfection last week, cruelly revealed his inability to arouse any feelings let alone collective passion in a team low on character and charisma. A less than impressive communicator, Flick was often shown second-guessing himself, inviting his players to offer up their opinions. That collaborative stance was meant to look enlightened and relaxed but only betrayed huge levels of insecurity.
If the national team manager did not seem to fully trust his own ideas, how could his team?
Flick’s position became untenable (Swen Pfortner via Getty Images)
As caretaker manager at Bayern Munich, he cut a nice and understanding figure to successfully connect with the players after his predecessor, Niko Kovac, had spectacularly lost the dressing room. Tactically, Flick re-introduced some of the Pep Guardiola and Jupp Heynckes systems of high-line pressure and possession, then rode the wave all the way to the Champions League final, where they beat Paris Saint-Germain. Things were a lot shakier in his first and only full season in Munich afterwards, but the team’s defensive problems were overshadowed by his public row with sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic.
Perhaps nobody should have been surprised that a man with a total of 18 months of top-flight experience as a coach should struggle to build a side with a strong identity and then become progressively lost as he tried to correct his own mistakes but only added new ones in the process. The longer his ill-fated spell continued, the more his inexperience showed, especially in the trio of disastrous home friendlies — 3-3 against Ukraine, and defeats to Poland and Colombia — that thrust him to the brink of dismissal in June.
GO DEEPER
Flick remains coach only by default as Germany flounder and home Euros edge ever closer
Saturday’s line-up against Japan illustrated the all-pervasive lack of clarity and purpose once more.
It was a Bayern-style 4-2-3-1, with Kai Havertz as a false nine in place of the injured Niclas Fullkrug, but with a more passive approach off the ball than Flick’s Champions League winners had been. Joshua Kimmich was played as a right-back, at times inverted, a la David Alaba and John Stones under Pep Guardiola and, latterly, Oleksandr Zinchenko at Arsenal and Trent Alexander-Arnold with Liverpool.
On the left, though, Flick took a leaf out of Joachim Low’s book at the 2014 World Cup and played a right-footed centre-back, Nico Schlotterbeck, to provide defensive balance.
That proved his undoing, as the Borussia Dortmund defender was at fault for Japan’s first two goals and nearly gave away a third before the break. The way things completely fell apart in the second half was indicative of a side that had given up on themselves.
There was no coming back from that.
(Top photo: Julian Stratenschulte via Getty Images)
