THE SUNDAY COLUMN: Germany’s World Cup Disaster

Paul Schmidt-Troschke takes an in-depth look at Germany’s 2026 footballing debacle. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to this week's World Cup Football, etc. Sunday column with me, Paul Schmitroschke. Today I am going to lead you through the most important steps for why Germany, again, for the third time in a row, exited the biggest football competition in the world after winning it just 12 years ago. For German football, this year's World Cup exit can only be described as a total disaster. And I am neither the only one, nor is it an exaggeration, when I say that the round of 32 match against the unbeatable football powerhouse of Paraguay was the worst performance I have ever seen from a German national team in a World Cup. But how could it get so far? Here is the autopsy answering exactly that question. A staggering statistic to begin with. Germany's last World Cup match without conceding a goal was the final in 2014. The fact by itself tells its own story about the enormous and structural weakness in Germany's defense. One of the most obvious points of failure was the inability to effectively counter an opposing team using a deep block defense. Something which we have seen a lot, especially underdog teams, using in this 2026 World Cup. For Germany, this was one of the biggest issues in all of the games after the first match against Curaçao, namely in the games against Ivory Coast, Ecuador, and Paraguay. And while the team did not have a strategy, neither did individual players. And that is one of the most damning conclusions from this World Cup that neither as a team nor on any individual level Germany was able to stand out in any category. The whole squad was lacking everything as a whole as well as individually. For the fifth most valuable team in this World Cup coming in just under 1 billion euros, and with players like Jamal Muziala or Florian Wirz being worth more than 100 million euros each, this performance is an indictment across all categories. While the players' failure represents only one side of the equation, coaching is the other. And that was arguably even more consequential. German coach Julian Nagelsmann has experienced the biggest downfall of a German national team coach in decades, and he truly earned it, since he ignored all warnings, and that quite arrogantly. When it came to the nomination of players for the national team, Nagelsmann declared the merit principle to be his best tool for choosing the best players. But when the list of players was released a couple of weeks before the tournament, there was not too much left of said merit principle. The second best attacker of the last season in the Bundesliga, Dennis Undav, was not among the starting eleven for the first three matches. But still, a skilled communicator could have explained the situation quite well. But Julen Nagelsmann does not exhibit such traits. Instead, he reacted quite annoyed. And for a coach who sets out to have a clear plan for everything, he made surprisingly many changes and decisions which completely contradict his own words. The most prominent case, of course, was the backstabbing of Germany's number one, Oliver Baumgart, who just days after the season ended got the message that retired Manuel Neuer will make a surprising return. But lastly, the best coach in the world would have had his trouble to create a successful German team for this tournament, because German football is struggling with a deep structural crisis. It all starts with expectations from both fans and the German FA itself. We understand us still being a world-class footballing nation, which we are obviously not anymore. We can get there again, but only with a clear plan and managed expectations. Instead of thinking that we can realistically win everything every time, we have to understand how past German success came into fruition. A team worthy of winning the World Cup or European championship needs to be built over time. The most important thing is not winning, but seeing results of constant improvement over time. As Germany was not among the top 16 teams in the past three World Cups, this has now ultimately achieved what was necessary. A collective realization that things have to change fundamentally and that we are not anymore who we used to think we are. When asked in 2024, after Germany was kicked out by Spain in the quarterfinals of the Euros, German coach Julian Nagelsmann said that the only thing which makes him sad is that we now must wait two years before we will win the World Cup. I think we have to wait much longer for that to happen again. But most importantly, even we Germans having failed so hard and decisively over the last twelve years, we can still look down on our southern European neighbor, Italy.