It is always good to propose theses that no one can refute. So, thesis: Hansi Flick would not be the new national coach if Franz Beckenbauer had prevailed back then. In 2004 the football emperor decided that the very inexperienced team boss Jürgen Klinsmann had to be provided with an experienced assistant. Holger Osieck occurred to the emperor, who had already proven himself as a serious helper during Beckenbauer’s time as team boss, including through well-founded half-time analyzes on television (“we switch”).
Osieck, however, had the disadvantage that it came from the shop that Klinsmann wanted to take apart. Klinsmann solidly ignored the imperial decision and instead dialed the cell phone number of Joachim Löw, whom he caught on a mountain bike tour in the Black Forest. We don’t know for sure whether Löw said “I’m interested in the job”. On the other hand, history teaches that it was so.
Klinsmann had big plans at the time, but that was probably not what he had in mind: that he would renew a tradition here that he had actually just abolished. For decades, the German Football Association had nourished itself when selecting its national coaches, and for decades the boss’s assistant later became boss himself. That applied to Sepp Herberger, Helmut Schön and Jupp Derwall, and Berti Vogts also came from the company’s own coaching staff. This touchingly old-fashioned principle lost its validity when frenzied, funny coaching commissions thought about Paul Breitner and ended up with Erich Ribbeck and later with Rudi Völler. With Völler, the story goes that he raised his head at the wrong moment in one of these maddeningly comical sessions.
Hansi Flick works like a national coach should
Klinsmann’s notorious escape reflex involuntarily set the story going again, Klinsmann was followed by Löw, and with a small, distinctive dangling, Hansi Flick now also fits into the historical pattern. Between his co-coaching and national coaching days, he briefly won seven titles with FC Bayern.
Flick comes to this high position as a club coach, but he can still be considered a classic national coach – not only because of his DFB socialization. He ticks like a national coach should. Flick is not how Ottmar Hitzfeld could be, who provoked competitive battles in training to keep the tension high and sometimes played off the players against each other. The colleague Thomas Tuchel once admiringly called the nine and a half months it took Flick in Munich from taking office to winning the Champions League “the longest tournament in the world”. In fact, Flick managed to create a tournament spirit with clarity and a steady hand that carried the eleven through everyday life and made them appear unbeatable for a while.
Nostalgics can consider Flick’s rise from DFB assistant to national coach to be a good story. You should just not rely on Marcus Sorg, Danny Röhl or the free-kick coach Buttgereit to take over the office afterwards.