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Haunted and alone, Hansi Flick could not conceal the mutiny in his ranks. Germany’s manager was supposed to have appeared for his press conference alongside a player, but he claimed none were available due to travel demands.
Given that few road journeys at this tightly clustered Qatar World Cup take longer than an hour, this looked suspiciously like a snub. It is also likely to incur a fine from Fifa. Except Herr Flick has, frankly, more grievous fates to contemplate. He is a mere 90 minutes away from presiding over his country’s most galling major tournament exit.
He strived for an air of nonchalance, shrugging that his team needed only a “good night’s sleep” before running headlong into a Spanish hurricane. They might also need to pray, break a wishbone or, invoking a peculiarly German good-luck custom, hang a horseshoe over the dressing-room door. For a side who just succumbed to Japan are about to face perhaps the most thrilling Spanish line-up in a decade, electrified by young midfield talents Gavi and Pedri, fresh from a 7-0 marmalising of Costa Rica. It seems, on paper, a mismatch.
And yet for Flick, a departure this early would be unconscionable. When, in 2018, Die Mannschaft belied their billing as defending champions by tumbling out in the group phase, it was cause for national embarrassment.
“No words,” mourned Bild. “Over and done with,” declared Die Welt. A World Cup campaign that dissolved in dust in three games: it was a wounding comedown for the four-time champions. This one, though, could be over in two.
Against this backdrop, Flick was asked whether Germany were a diminished force. For a moment, he bristled with defiance. “We had 26 shots on goal against Japan,” he said. “We could have been two or three ahead. So, we need to be brave, to believe in ourselves. We are convinced of our philosophy.”
Behind the scenes, there is mounting unease in the German camp. The two Borussia Dortmund defenders, Niklas Süle and Nico Schlotterbeck, both culpable in Japan’s resurgence from a goal down, have received withering criticism in Bavaria, where Bayern Munich are almost a state religion.
İlkay Gündoğan, linchpin for Manchester City, has lacerated his team-mates for “not wanting the ball” in a defeat that Thomas Müller described as “ludicrous”.
The impression is of warring factions, although Chelsea’s Kai Havertz has sought to act as mediator. “I wasn’t in a great mood, I was full of rage,” he said of his own reaction to Germany’s humbling by Japan. “I can understand there’s negativity in the air. I also know there are always lots of shots fired against us, that not everyone is behind us. We know at this tournament that we might not have the support we are used to. But I would appeal to everyone to support us against Spain.”
At 57, Flick is nobody’s fool, having engineered a remarkable treble-winning season at Bayern just two years ago. As such, he was conscious not to sound any note of fatalism. “The defeat to Japan was bitter, hard to take,” he admitted. “But we stick to our guns. We can improve tactically and technically, but we will see a team who know what is at stake, and who will do their utmost to get into the round of 16. The door is still open.”
There was, ominously, no player beside him to reinforce this message. Flick argued that this was only a reflection of difficult logistics, rather than anything more sinister. “I came by myself to the press conference, because we didn’t want any player to spend almost three hours in the car,” he explained. “That’s why I said I would do it alone. All 26 players are important, so I don’t have one here. We are putting our full focus on the game.”
The reasoning was curious. Germany are based at Zulal Wellness Resort, in northern Qatar: a fair schlep, admittedly, from the conference venue here in Doha, but barely more than an hour. The alternative conclusion was that Flick was wary of his feuding players creating any more diversions from the task at hand. The longer the inquisition continued, the sterner he became.
In particular, he did not want to hear any more references to protest, after the firestorm unleashed by his team’s rebellion against Fifa, posing for a photograph with hands across their mouths to complain about the edict against rainbow armbands. Eden Hazard, the Belgium winger, suggested that the gesture had shifted Germany’s attention away from football, saying: “They would have been better not to do it and to win.”
Flick reacted to Hazard’s crowing with disdain. When reminded of the remarks, he was pressed in English on whether Germany had been spending too much time on “other things”. He looked at his translation earpiece as if it were malfunctioning. “Nein,” he shot back, before a lengthy pause. “No.”
There is a strained atmosphere around Flick, reminiscent of the awkwardness Fabio Capello once cultivated with England. Many symptoms of the English World Cup malaise – the infighting, the discontent, the unexpected slip-ups – have transplanted themselves to the Germans. “What is the German for schadenfreude?” one headline inquired four years ago. It is becoming a recurrent theme.
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