“We want to know where we stand,” said national coach Antonio Di Salvo before comparing his U21 national team first with France and then with England within five days. These are two of the favorites for the European Championships in Georgia and Romania, which start in nine months. They lost 1-0 to France in Magdeburg, and the German team lost 3-1 to England on Tuesday evening in Sheffield. The two setbacks were also a timely warning before the 2023 tournament. “We are disappointed,” said Di Salvo Tuesday night, “we narrowly lost against two big nations and were a crucial bit worse in both games.”
The German team in Sheffield had to do without the ailing striker Youssoufa Moukoko from Borussia Dortmund. Wolfsburg’s Felix Nmecha headed the 1-0 lead in the 35th minute, but Folarin Balogun from Stade Reims (41′), Conor Gallagher from Chelsea (47′) and Cole Palmer from Manchester City (95′) turned the result around in favor of the hosts. “We have to get even closer as a team,” said Cologne attacker Jan Thielmann afterwards as a lesson learned from the two games: “And we have to develop more of a winning mentality.”
The hierarchy of nations in this world of young footballers between the ages of 20 and 23 is not that different from that of the senior national teams. With the exception of Denmark, all of the best European nations from the world rankings have qualified for the U21 European Championship: Belgium, France, England, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Croatia and Switzerland. Added to these ten are six other nations, with hosts Romania and Georgia and Israel trailing a bit behind in the world rankings.
“You noticed that we had a lot of players on the pitch who aren’t playing much at the moment,” says Di Salvo
The last four nations qualified for the European Championship in the playoffs on Tuesday evening: Ukraine, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Israel. The four groups will be drawn in Bucharest on October 18th. The tournament from June 21st to July 8th culminates in quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. In the finals of the past few years, Spain, Germany and Portugal have been dominant and in the last three European Championship tournaments there even completely among themselves. It’s been 15 years since none of these three nations were in the U21 European Championship final.
You don’t know exactly how favored Germany opponents France and England will be at the next tournament. It’s 13 years since the English were in the U21 European Championship final, and it’s been 20 years for the French. In nine months, the Romanian cities of Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca as well as the Georgian cities of Tbilisi, Batumi and Kutaisi are not just about the two places for the final, but also about three places for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. France is set for it, and the other three best teams in the U21 European Championship are also allowed to play in the Olympics. That’s a big goal for the German team.
But for this she will have to improve significantly before the European Championships. “You could tell we had a lot of players on the pitch who aren’t playing much at the moment,” said Di Salvo in Sheffield. Most of his players are currently not regulars in their clubs. A handful are regulars, like Ansgar Knauf at Eintracht Frankfurt, some are mostly substitutes, such as Lazar Samardzic at Udinese Calcio, and others rarely feature, like Malick Thiaw, who recently joined AC Milan. This will also be a criterion when Di Salvo thinks about his EM squad. He has “30 to 35 players” in mind. Before the next two friendlies are due in November, he will pay even more attention to how much practice the young footballers are fighting for in their clubs. That’s where the fight for the regular places in the national team begins.
So where is the German U21 nine months before the European Championship? In any case, as the defending champion, they are not at the top of the list of favorites at the moment. For the time being, the English have probably pushed their way there with a strong generation.