Rarely has a national coach had his players together outside of tournaments for so long.
The international match at the end of the season lasted 14 days. Three time windows were built in so that Hansi Flick (58) and his team could come to the DFB campus in Frankfurt to practice game forms and processes.
After the three winless games against Ukraine (3: 3), Poland (0: 1) and Colombia (0: 2), the football nation asks itself: What did Flick actually train with the national team during this time?
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The criticism of his person has also left its mark on Flick. “It’s a situation I’ve never experienced before,” admits the national coach.
This weekend there is only a brief exchange with his coaching staff. The big analysis of the international trip should only take place in the coming weeks. The players heard a summary of his thoughts from the national coach in the dressing room at the Schalke Arena before Flick released them on vacation.
He said in front of the whole team: “The whole two weeks were nothing.”
And promised: “From September it will be over with trying, we have to get used to it.”
As always with Flick, there was also praise. The team would have played well over the first line of the Colombians. The national coach was at a loss as to what happened next. Instead of playing the ball into the dangerous areas, starting deep runs, the pros turned around and played the ball back and forth again and again. The team was unsettled, above all by Flick himself.
After the disappointing 3: 3 against Ukraine at the start, Flick changed the training content. Suddenly he had fewer tactics and more duels practiced, although the plan was different.
In the final training session on Monday before the Colombia game, the national coach had the A team play against the B team. The A-Elf won 1-0. She was driven by the six-man specialist Emre Can, behind whom Dortmund played like against Poland in the back three Kehrer, Thiaw and Rüdiger. The surprise for the team then followed the following day.
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Source: PressBox 06/24/2023
Flick presented a completely different match plan. Can was suddenly set up in the back three as the chief of defence. Thiaw, who had played the central role in the back three against Poland, was pushed to the right by Flick. At the expense of Kehrer, who lost his starting place.
Goretzka, on the other hand, who was not part of the A-Elf in final training, was suddenly set up again as a six after this experiment had already ended prematurely in the 3-3 win against Poland when he was substituted.
In the team circle, this approach reminded some players of the harmony change Gündogan / Goretzka in the World Cup opening defeat against Japan (1: 2), which heralded the preliminary round.
The feeling in the team: Flick is trying to please everyone again with the fair distribution of playing time. It’s a process that Flick repeats over and over again.
Although it was only a friendlies, Flick always kept quite a secret about the line-up, even from his own players. Many players didn’t even know if and where they were playing, even in the afternoons of game days, which many pros found silly.
Flick’s fear of the secret betrayal seems too great. The line-up should by no means be revealed in advance. This was already a hot topic for the players at the World Cup in Qatar. At that time, for example, the plan to bring Niklas Süle as right-back in the opening game against Japan was only revealed on the day of the game. The plan went wrong.
On the other hand, the team was rarely surprised by Flick when processing the games. What surprised the pros: After the 0-1 draw in Poland, some had noticed what the national coach had said in the interview on ARD. His speech that night after the team returned to the team hotel was almost identical. Here, too, he spoke of a “process in which the team is”.
The players got to hear the same as the audience of millions before. The national coach did not go into depth with them either. The pros were left at a loss and discussed their open questions with each other without success.
Frustration instead of anticipation a year before the European Championships at home in Germany: In the past 16 games, national coach Flick has never brought the same starting XI, even putting substitute captain Joshua Kimmich (r.) on the bench against Colombia. Receipt: a total of four victories!
Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa
Why did they always concede such easy goals? Why does the team create so few chances of its own?
Her realization was that this could no longer be bad luck or coincidence. Something, so the tenor, is fundamentally wrong in the national team. It was not said, but understood as a criticism of Flick. As before on the pitch, there was a lack of leaders in these discussion groups who could have put their foot down.
Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka’s claim to leadership is viewed more and more critically within the team, especially during the sporting crisis. The Bayern duo is loud both internally and publicly, but then fails to lead the team on the field. So far, Flick has also shied away from expressing his trust in triple winner Ilkay Gündogan as midfield boss and thus strengthening him as a leading player.
A regular place guarantee for the city star could annoy Bayern’s competitors Kimmich and Goretzka. Flick went into the three international matches with a plan, as he emphasized several times.
He took his professionals’ absolute belief in it even before the experiments. Before the opening game against Ukraine, the national coach announced his experiment with the back three to the players, but with the addition that this was actually not his favorite system. A statement that caused astonishment.
The triple chain experiment failed. In the next international matches against Japan (September 9) and against runners-up France (September 12), the national coach will again rely on the back four, with which he also secured the treble with FC Bayern 2020. In a telephone call on Wednesday, Flick assured DFB President Bernd Neuendorf (61) that he would present a team on the pitch from September that would already be concrete pillars of the European Championship team.
Flick plans to name a circle of 14 players who will form the core of his starting eleven. All nominated professionals should then clearly know about him: You are number one in your position, you are number two and challenger.
Flick’s plan should work this time. Otherwise it could be the national coach himself who is no longer nominated by the DFB for the planned US trip in October with the games against the USA and Mexico.
2023-06-24 20:37:53
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