Steffen Freund was horrified. Or was it Marco Hagemann, his fellow RTL commentator? In any case, one of them’s voice cracked when he shouted into the microphone in the middle of the first half: “What’s going on today?”
Nothing worked anymore. The defense was an open hole. Before that, the protectors and builders Joshua Kimmich and İlkay Gündoğan completely lost their grip on the game, and as soon as the ball was close, one of them said to the other as part of the loss of control: “You take it, I’ve got it for sure.”
Julian Nagelsmann, the national coach, had imagined everything completely differently. When the game against the Turks was lost, he gave the TV expert Lothar Matthäus, the presenter Florian König and tens of millions of national coach colleagues in the country a tactical lecture about all possible and impossible defensive systems, and the former world champion Matthäus listened in amazement. “The belt has to match the shoes,” he once said, but now he feels that nothing fits at the moment, especially “not Kimmich with Gündogan.”
