In the days before perhaps the biggest game of his coaching career, the quarter-final of the European Championship against Spain, Julian Nagelsmann tried to “write a script”. That’s what he said himself as he sat in the stadium in Stuttgart on Thursday evening, where the game will kick off 24 hours later. He tried to predict possible outcomes of this game – and thus also possible adjustments. And even if the coach doesn’t want to reveal the plot of the script scene by scene yet, he at least presented an exciting teaser in the press conference.
In the next 24 minutes, he will not reveal which team he will use for the blockbuster match against Spain – Maximilian Mittelstädt or David Raum? Florian Wirtz or Leroy Sané? He will, however, repeatedly hint at which ideas from his script he wants to use to put his players in the spotlight.
Focus on your own team
“My focus is less on Yamal than on Jamal,” he says, pausing briefly for effect. He wants to make it clear that he is not so much focused on the Spanish team around 16-year-old winger Lamine Yamal, but rather on his team around Jamal Musiala. He has also developed a defensive strategy, but he stresses that “we have the ambition to have the ball ourselves.” Against a strong team, it is always “more pleasant when you have the ball yourself.” He has formulated this “clearly as a mandate.”
But what happens if – an obvious plot twist – the Spanish do have the ball? He is planning on “phases in which we want to attack, in which we want to take away their space”. But the Spanish can do that too. The national coach sees a “quick transition game” and “more directness” – but with that also a new risk for the Spanish: namely when his team can escape the pressure with quick passes.
On Wednesday, Toni Kroos, the main actor of the German game, said in Herzogenaurach that “games like this are decided in the middle”. There, in key scenes, he and his teammates will meet Rodri, the Spanish midfielder of Manchester City, whom İlkay Gündoğan later called the “best player in the world” in his position in Stuttgart. About him, Julian Nagelsmann said that “we have also developed an idea for him that he cannot play without the final pressure”. That would really be a plot twist: Of the last 77 competitive games with Manchester City and Spain, Rodri has only lost one.
