Hi everybody, I’m Jan. First of all, many thanks to Charles for letting me write on his blog. I don’t know nearly as much about music as he does, but as a Euro-boy who has followed every European Championship since 1988 I may be able to contribute some interesting perspectives to his coverage of EURO 2012 in “Polkraine” (congrats to the British press for this gem of a coinage).
So, I am going to pretend to have missed the anti-German jibes in his previous post and will, consequently, focus mostly on the German team before their opening game against Portugal tomorrow. Despite Germany’s reputation as an international football powerhouse it has actually been quite some time since the Nationalmannschaft was seen as the overwhelming favorite to win a big tournament (even though some people saw them as favorites in 2008). This current perception, however, seems much more prevalent abroad than in Germany itself where the mood is rather skeptical. (Full disclosure: I’m following the EURO from the US and my observations of the mood in Germany are based mainly on the compulsive reading of everything football related and personal conversations with friends at home.)
Now, why is it that “the Germans” are so doubtful about a team that they generally consider to be the most talented since the 1972 EURO champions? I think there are four main reasons:
(1) Many people feel that the current team didn’t have enough time to train and play together, in particular because the majority of the team had to play in the Champions League final a mere three weeks ago.
(2) The fear that the Bayern players – seven of which can reasonably hope to play in tomorrow’s opener – will suffer from some form of psychological trauma caused by them having finished second in all three club competitions this season.
(3) There is also the belief that Jogi Löw is going to rely too much on some of the more experienced players (e.g., Per Mertesacker and Miroslav Klose) even though they may not be fully fit to play and more promising alternatives (e.g., Mats Hummels and Mario Gomez) are available.
(4) There is a growing uneasiness about the general development of the national team. While everybody is happy that the dark ages of German football (1998-2004) seem to be gone for good, there is now a very clear demand for silverware and this is in turn connected to the question if the current generation – despite its abundant talent – has what it takes to win titles.
Well, I happen to think that a lot of this skepticism is warranted. Löw’s system is very dependent on so-called automatisms and I’m not sure that these will be readily available for a team that had less than two weeks to train together. The counterargument, of course, is that the core of the squad has been together for a long time and that most of the players know each other really well. We’ll simply have to wait and see which explanation holds true. I also think that the very long season, especially for Bayern, will have an impact on the team, not necessarily in mental terms, but possibly with regard to the overall fitness of the team.
With regard to individual players, I am convinced that Löw has his favorites and it just so happens that poor Mats Hummels is not among them. Fair enough, he hasn’t been his usual world-class self in the dozen or so caps he’s earned so far, but that’s no justification to play a barely recovered Per Mertesacker instead of him. If Klose is fully fit, on the other hand, he should clearly start instead of Gomez. Finally, I think Löw does a great job at preparing his teams for important games and he has them play very attractive football, but his individual decisions are not beyond reproach. After all, he had Piotr Trochowski start in a World Cup semifinal.
The last point I want to look at in more detail is the perception of the relationship between style and success. Again, most people in Germany are very happy that the national team plays attractive football. However, people are also very tired of finishing second or third. Sure, that would be a great result for most countries, England in particular, but a country that has won six trophies since 1954 is simply used to winning a big one every dozen years or so. (It’s been 16 long years.)
Now, in the past, of course, Germany often played very unattractive football and ended up winning nevertheless. That’s pretty much what Germans did; the very definition of Germanness and German football, even though this was highly unfair with regard to some of the great German teams of the past that played very attractive football. In the last three tournaments, however, Germany played very well, even great at times, and didn’t win anything but the grudging respect of the foreign press and the ecstatic celebrations of the millions of German fans in the streets who don’t really care about football, but want to have an excuse to party and get wasted.
“Has Germany become the new Holland?” people ask with fear in their eyes. Do Lahm, Schweinsteiger, Klose, Podolski and Özil have what Breitner, Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller, Sammer and Matthäus had in excess? Guts. Cojones. Löw would say you don’t need this old-fashioned stuff anymore; the system will take care of everything. Look at Spain or Barça, he would point out with that smug smile of his. And completely forget about Puyol.
Prediction for tomorrow:
Holland 2 – Denmark 1
Germany 3 – Portugal 2