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Joachim Löw is allowed to continue, at least until the European Championship in the summer of 2021, and if he is successful, there may be another year. His current contract runs through 2022, and an early layoff by the association with the associated high severance pay was deemed highly unlikely in light of recent financial troubles at the DFB.
Therefore, it was in the hands of the national coach himself. In view of the enormous public discontent that erupted after the Spanish match, he could have said of his own free will: Friends, I don’t have to do that to myself, I will ride into the sunset. But not so Joachim Löw. He still believes that he can still achieve something great with this team. He also believed that after the 2018 World Cup disaster he was the man to start over. He just believes that he, the world champion coach, is basically the right person. And maybe I can’t imagine anything else. After 16 years at the DFB.
Half right, half wrong decision
“A single game cannot and should not be the yardstick for the overall performance of the national team and the national coach.” That is probably the central and at the same time most vulnerable phrase of the statement with which the DFB reinforced its national coach in the afternoon. On the one hand, he is right: before the 0: 6, only a few underprivileged demanded Löw’s resignation, instead Löw could refer to his record of undefeated in 2020, having confidently competed in qualifying for the European Championship on year before – and last but not least, through the sweep of three world champions Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels and Jérome Boateng, making clear their will to change the world.
But that’s only half the story – the other half is the fact that the team failed to control its defensive woes in games in which it did not lose. That this team hasn’t played exciting football for a long time. This includes that especially Müller, but also Hummels, have stabilized their form again at a high level, which is a kind of bad luck for Löw because his decision from spring 2019 to fall 2020 is suddenly perceived very different. And that includes, and this is probably the most serious, that the national team is only seen in the end under a gray veil.
So every decision the DFB had to make was a weighing of interests. Each decision can only be half correct, but only half incorrect. Discouraged and brave at the same time. Somehow a decision to include a favorite word of the national coach.
If you’re serious about rebuilding, setbacks actually come at a price. But they may not be so strong that statisticians have to go back to the early 1930s to find a similar fiasco in their chronicles. With a 0-3 one would have complained, then it would have continued like this. But it was a 0: 6, which could also have been a 0:10. Moving on is much more difficult.
No successor with charisma in sight
So Joachim Löw gets his chance again and at the same time the association has bought time to start looking for a suitable successor immediately. Because that’s also part of understanding this decision – ultimately only DFB employees Stefan Kuntz and Marcus Sorg would have seriously volunteered for this job at this point, the gray veil would hardly have been removed.
Everything that would have had a glow would not have been available: not Klopp, not Tuchel, not a nail man, not even a Flick. It may look different next year. In any case, the DFB is not trusted to find a solution with an internationally renowned foreign coach. Which is not necessarily due to association, but at least as much to perseverance in public.
Today’s decision is not one of change. It is a decision to move on. What’s the joke in all of this? Maybe in the end it was the right decision.
