Two more defeats will make his position simply untenable. Even that won’t save him if things continue to unravel in three months’ time, though. But he will be Germany coach by default - there is nobody else to take over at short notice. Increasingly, it looks as if 2020’s treble with Bayern, after being promoted from an assistant role when Niko Kovac was fired in the November of that season, could have been a blip in an otherwise undistinguished coaching career.įlick will continue in the role through to September, as DFB president Bernd Neuendorf has confirmed. That perception is waning with every poor subsequent performance. Flick was allowed to continue after last winter’s World Cup because bosses believed that group-stage exit, following a shock 2-1 opening loss to Japan in a game they had led after 74 minutes, was an unlucky accident for a proven winner.
The same is true of his bosses at the DFB. But, like his predecessor, he is also in danger of losing his team’s trust in his methods. The coach is generally liked in the dressing room, just as Low was until the end. “If I was in charge, I would go back to the back four. “The back three didn’t work,” Can said after the Colombia game. He will, surely, ditch an ill-advised formation that players openly questioned this week. Sporting directors do often play the role of bad cop in Germany but Voller’s outburst didn’t feel part of a joined-up communication strategy, it was more like an act of desperation.įlick can but hope that a return to form of the squad’s Bayern contingent under Thomas Tuchel next season will lift the side before early September friendlies at home to Japan and France. It was a curious defence in light of Flick’s decision to try out a couple of new faces, such as 21-year-old AC Milan defender Malick Thiaw, as well the coach’s plea to the media a few days ago to temper their criticism of the players. Too many of them lack the requisite quality to play for the national team, the 1990 World Cup winner said, and he predicted that some of them “won’t be seen” when the call-ups are made for the next games in September. Sporting director Rudi Voller tried to shift the blame, insisting that Flick was “a poor sod” for having to work “with these players”. “Help! Flick is ruining our Euros,” tabloid Bild exclaimed. But these three games, advertised as a chance to develop a Plan B for next year’s tournament, only amplified fears Germany are heading for a fourth consecutive disaster in a major finals (They failed to get out of the group at the past two World Cups, either side of a round of 16 exit at Euro 2020). Most of the half-decent moments in the flattering draw with Ukraine (3-3) in Bremen, the 1-0 defeat to Poland in Warsaw and the loss to Colombia came when Flick temporarily reverted to a back four. Midfielder Can played in the middle of a back three (Photo: Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
Instead, Flick needlessly added to the prevailing sense of uncertainty and chaos, shuffling his line-ups without much rhyme and reason and adopting a formation his players never believed in. Still low on confidence after their World Cup debacle, Germany craved clarity, continuity and simplicity. The resulting confusion was sadly reminiscent of Low’s ‘Jazz Odyssey’ days at the previous European Championship in 2021, when the team did their best to cope with many of the manager’s half-baked ideas but ultimately could not make sense of the nonsensical.
Instead of honing his preferred 4-2-3-1 system with the best players at his disposal in this month’s matches, Flick opted to try out a back-three formation that undermined Germany’s remaining strengths. Perhaps most depressingly, many had seen it coming. Germany’s players digest their latest defeat to Colombia (Photo: Federico Gambarini/picture alliance via Getty Images)įlick, 58, professed himself “disappointed” after their latest setback, freely admitting that his experiments had been “pants”.
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