Racing Post

Flick has Germans back on the right pathpa again

Liam Flin

THE last World Cup marked the beginning of the end for Joachim Low’s long reign as GermanyG manager. AfterA failing to make it out of a grroup featuring Sweden, Meexico and South Korea in 20118, Germany also fell short at EuroE 2020, in which they werre overpowered by Enggland in the last 16 at Weembley.

ThatT closed the book on World Cup-winning maanager Low’s tenure andd things have started to lookl up since Hansi Flicck, a former assistant to Low,L took charge in Auggust last year.

AlthoughA an unpopular decision with a number of national team followers, Flick has opte d to saturate the Germany y team with players from the Bayern Munich side he led to o Champions League glory two o years ago.

Leon GGoretzka, Joshua Kimmich h, Leroy Sane and Jamal Mu usiala are now some of Germany y’s biggest stars and the decis sion to take a more Bayern-bbased approach yielded a run of seven straight wins at th he end of World Cup qualifica ation.

They feell short in their latest Nations LLeague campaign but a 5-2 thra ashing of defending European n champions Italy in June was s eyecatching and they lost only y one of six games in a challeng ging section.

Being drawn alongside Spain in Group E isn’t ideal but Germany’s squad is well balanced, with the experience of Thomas Muller and Manuel Neuer complimented by bright young things such as Musiala, Kai Havertz and Nico Schlotterbeck among others.

The injury suffered by Timo Werner earlier this month accentuates the lack of an attacking focal point, but Flick has players out wide and in attacking midfield positions to compensate for that.

It would take a big effort to go and lift the trophy but they look in a much better place than they have done in their last two major tournaments and should not be discounted.

DLThe bulk of Hajime Moriyasu’s managerial career was spent in charge of J1 League outfit Sanfrecce Hiroshima but he did make 35 appearances for his country as a player in the 1990s.

• Majority of squad ply their

trade in Europe’s top divisions • Pace in wide positions

• Yuto Nagatomo and Maya Yoshida are real leaders at the back

• Struggled in front of goal

during qualifying

• Majority of squad inexperienced

at major tournament level

• Lack of central midfield strength could be punished by possession-focused Spain and Germany units

BBC 7pm, Ahmad bin Ali BBC 1pm, Al Thumama BBC 3pm, Ahmad bin Ali

WORLD CUP 2022 GROUP E

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2022-11-17T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-17T08:00:00.0000000Z

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