The German team has won back its audience

Is it possible not to achieve a goal and still not fail? It may sound paradoxical, but the German national team managed to do so at the European Football Championships in their own country. The Germans did not achieve their goal of winning the tournament, but no one would accuse them of failing. Their performances were too committed, their games too spectacular, their effort too great.

Especially in their last match, the quarter-final against Spain, one of the favourites. The score was 1:2 after 120 minutes, in a game that was decided in extra time in the 119th minute in favour of the Spanish. It was much less about the footballing quality that the German team showed, but more about the way in which they performed.

The national coach tried to use big words

In the end, the DFB team had achieved something remarkable: it had won back the affection of the audience, which it had lost since its failure at the World Cup in Qatar. Minutes after the final whistle, the fans sang “Major Tom”, the team’s tournament anthem. The farewell to the audience lasted for several minutes.

Julian Nagelsmann, the German national coach, spoke afterwards, not without pathos, of the success in “reawakening a country that, in my opinion, sometimes sinks into too much sadness. We had a great symbiosis with the people in the country, with the fans.” These are very big words, but football plays a significant role in Germany.

The result, from a purely factual point of view, is rather average: the tournament that the Germans played was, on the one hand, far better than the worst fears, but on the other hand, not as good as optimists had imagined in their wildest hopes.

After all, it defined a new claim, a claim that was once self-evident in previous years: to be counted among the world’s best again. The Germans had completely gambled away this status with their failure in the World Cup preliminary rounds in 2018 and 2022, with their round of 16 exit at an overall unconvincing European Championship three years ago during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The association seems to have learned some lessons

For Nagelsmann himself, it will be a particular source of satisfaction: the fact that he took over the national team after being fired from FC Bayern could be seen as a risk, the risk was high, and fears seemed to come true when the team lost to Turkey and Austria last autumn. To have made a turnaround in a short space of time is more than just respectable: it is impressive evidence that the coach was able to recognize and correct his own mistakes in a short space of time.

The German Football Association (DFB) also seems to have learned a few lessons. Those in charge resisted attempts to drag the team and national players into political discussions before the tournament; quite unlike in Qatar, when the endless discussions about the rainbow armband not only caused a large part of the audience to shake their heads, but also did not necessarily help them concentrate on the tournament.

The situation is not stable

It was also escapades like these that contributed to the team and the audience becoming increasingly distant from each other, so that in the end a veritable gulf emerged. It goes without saying that a collection of wealthy football players can simulate down-to-earthness rather than live it out, but at least under Nagelsmann there was an effort to get closer to the fans again.

But the situation is anything but stable, even after the impressive performances at the European Championships. The team will have to work hard to regain the consistency that once distinguished it. Nagelsmann has shown in this tournament that he can be the right coach for this task. He managed to form a competitive community within a short space of time, after a bunch of not entirely untalented individuals had previously refused to work together.

This is by no means to be underestimated. And the audience appreciates it. At least for the moment, the team and the coach have earned and fought for the goodwill of the audience.