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rehe soccer world champion in 2014 has not only turned away from the best athletes in the world in recent years. The image values of the national team have only known one direction for years: downhill. The strategy of Oliver Bierhoff, former coach of the national team, has achieved the opposite of what it should also in this area. According to polls published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at this time, Germans’ identification with the national team has suffered greatly in recent years. And that’s not just because of the losses on the field.
The Chancellor has not come to the stadium for a long time when Germany plays. To be precise: the last German international match Angela Merkel attended was more than six years ago. It was the final of the Rio World Cup. That day, July 13, 2014, when the national team was proclaimed world champion. German football reached the peak of its social importance. A few months before the triumph, in the fall of 2013, a much-cited study was published: “We are the national team.”
According to this, 95 percent of the approximately 3,000 respondents considered the selection of national coach Joachim Löw “exemplary”. 90 percent described themselves as “big fans” of the team. According to the study, the national team also makes a significant contribution to the integration of foreign nationals. The national team could even be described as the “fourth estate” in the state. It is a “significant source of popular identification.” DFB director Oliver Bierhoff, who had commissioned the study as manager of the national team, said after it appeared: “We feel something like that.”
A feeling that has evaporated. After a World Cup in Russia in the summer of 2018, which was completely ruined in sporting and emotional terms, and the disastrous 6-0 victory against Spain on November 17, 2020 after two and a half years of reconstruction, the crisis of selection has reached a new dimension. Recalling the beautiful and distant days of German football under the eyes of the Chancellor, the height of the fall of the Germans’ favorite team becomes visible. Image levels have plummeted since Rio’s golden days. And the Germans’ identification with their national team has also steadily declined over the years.
According to the latest survey by data-driven management consultancy SLC Management, which works with numerous national and international football clubs and associations, as well as sponsors and investors, the national team has reached a low point. According to the latest poll, the image of the national team has the worst value in the era of national coach Joachim Löw. It is 3.84 on a scale of 1 (very good) to 5 (poor). As of June 2015, the image value was 1.78. Since then it has continuously decreased. The increasing alienation of German soccer fans from their national team in recent years is a measurable sentiment. And see.
Merkel’s estrangement
Since the triumph of Rio, the chancellor had only announced that she would play a single German international match. But in the meeting against the Netherlands in November 2015 in Hannover, he wanted to be there for reasons of state. This game, which four days after the terror in Paris was supposed to serve as a test of the country’s internal defenses after the attacks by Islamists, was canceled 90 minutes before the start for security reasons.
