National team
USA countdown: Nagelsmann activates the wealth of experience
National coach Julian Nagelsmann relies on Mats Hummels’ experience. photo
© Federico Gambarini/dpa
Julian Nagelsmann has to deliver for the first time on Saturday. Time is short. There are some hints before the USA game. Experienced professionals like Hummels and scaffolding are needed in the “here and now”.
The remarkably wiry-looking team senior During his DFB comeback, Mats Hummels naturally occupies the position in the center of defense alongside top dog Antonio Rüdiger.
And Joshua Kimmich will also be able to take his favorite place in the center of midfield next to captain Ilkay Gündogan on the national soccer team’s trip to the USA with Julian Nagelsmann, just like in their days together in Munich.
If the first training sequences in tranquil Foxborough, not far from the metropolis of Boston, are not misleading, the new national coach’s immediate measures during the short countdown to the international match against host USA on Saturday (9 p.m./RTL) in Hartford are: Experienced professionals at the control desk. And quickly build a resilient framework so that a successful home European Championship in 2024 is at least conceivable again after three recent tournament flops.
Nagelsmann a “stroke of luck” for Völler
“It goes without saying: When you play a tournament, you take part in it to win,” Nagelsmann said when he was hired. That sounded bold. For the 36-year-old, however, it is more of an ambitious goal. In any case, he is approaching his European Championship project differently than his predecessor, Hansi Flick, who did not create a core team with a clear system and familiar processes either before or after the botched Qatar World Cup. Nagelsmann, “a stroke of luck” for sports director Rudi Völler, who was once again happily watching in the US state of Massachusetts, coined a new buzzword for exactly this: “basic principles.”
The term immediately entered the players’ vocabulary. “There were relatively clear statements about the principles that we want to have in our game,” said captain Gündogan. And Jonas Hofmann seconded after the first base game on the well-kept training green: “We played a few basic principles that should always be there.”
Nagelsmann is forming a framework that will obviously consist largely of players over 30: Marc-André ter Stegen (32) in goal. Rüdiger (30) and Hummels (34) in front of them. Gündogan (32) and Kimmich, who is only 28 but has already made 80 international appearances, in midfield. And at the top of the line, Niclas Füllkrug (30), who has matured into a spokesman in just one year as a national player and has been upgraded by moving from Werder Bremen to Borussia Dortmund, is the first choice.
National coach relies on experience
There is also Thomas Müller (34), who can always give a team input – whether on the pitch or off. “We need players who take responsibility,” said Nagelsmann; Guys like the two 2014 world champions Hummels and Müller.
“I think experience is extremely important,” said triple champion Gündogan. Young players often “don’t have the right feeling for certain situations on the pitch. Sometimes you need a little calm, a little patience.” Tournament experience is a treasure. Hofmann, who is already 31, said: “Experience can give a team a lot.”
He is currently experiencing this at Bundesliga leaders Bayer Leverkusen, where the hyped coach Xabi Alonso gives support and orientation to a talented team with experienced professionals such as the Swiss Granit Xhaka (31), who has been trained in the Premier League, and the ex-Gladbacher Hofmann.
Twelve of the 26 professionals in the DFB squad are in their fourth decade of life. The average age is 28.5 years. Only four actors are younger than 25. Is it a coincidence that two of the newcomers – Kevin Behrens (32) and Robert Andrich (29) – are also older? Hofmann believes that Nagelsmann’s maturity can help, especially in the starting phase: “Experienced players don’t need that long to adapt to a coach’s new things.”
Nagelsmann lives in the “here and now”
Highly gifted youngsters like Bayer’s Florian Wirtz and Bayern’s Jamal Musiala (both 20) or the in-form Munich attacker Leroy Sané (27) should live out surrounded by the older ones in Nagelsmann’s 4-2-2-2 system and create those football moments that which the national coach wants to see at the home tournament at the latest. And ideally on Saturday in his debut game, which is eagerly awaited.
“We all have a great responsibility to play the best football for Germany,” said Nagelsmann. But he is not thinking far into the future in the largest host country for the 2026 World Cup. The 36-year-old is even putting the 2024 European Championships aside on his trip to America. Nagelsmann constantly talks about the “here and now,” which is another mantra alongside the “basic principles.” The here and now ideally means first defeating the USA and then Mexico in Philadelphia.
Simple handouts in training and team meetings should create the basis for this. “It’s also new for him at national team level, where time is limited,” said Gündogan to the previous club coach Nagelsmann. “He wants to get the most out of the little time he has.” After the first positive hours of working with the new head coach, the captain ventured a prediction: “It can be really good.”