World Cup: Germany’s reputation as a ‘tournament team’ put to the test

“You have a good thing here,” smiled Germany’s Thomas Müller, feeling the biceps of the new national hero, Niclas Füllkrug.

The moment between the players at a Doha press conference had something about it of the hedge-funder patronising a hunter-gatherer encountered on safari. Müller, a world champion in 2014 and a multimillionaire at Bayern Munich, embodies the modern sophisticated football that replaced Germany’s traditionally more physical game after 2004. He has described his onfield role as a Raumdeuter, an “interpreter of spaces”. 

By contrast, Füllkrug, a rustic centre-forward with a Cinderella story whose late equaliser against Spain kept his team in the World Cup, embodies old German football. On the field as off it, the Germans have spent the tournament fighting culture wars. On Thursday, they must pull themselves together and beat Costa Rica — by two goals, if Japan draw the other group game against Spain — or fly home in shame. Can they sustain their reputation as a “tournament team” by remaking themselves on the fly?

The loudest culture war is being fought at home. Some Germans, disgusted by Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers and LGBT+ people, are boycotting the World Cup. The tournament’s opening game drew fewer German TV viewers than some detective series, and though 17mn Germans watched the 1-1 draw with Spain, that was still 9mn down on the Germany-Mexico group stage match at the last World Cup.

Füllkrug’s own club, socially committed Werder Bremen, have stated that “the World Cup should never have been given to Qatar”, and pledged to “refrain in communications from being passionate about this tournament”. 

Still, Füllkrug says he has had supportive messages from club colleagues. More than that, the 29-year-old has shot from obscurity to become the nation’s darling. He started last season as a reserve with Werder in Germany’s second division, but got lucky when the coach, Markus Anfang, resigned after being accused of faking his Covid-19 vaccination certificate. Anfang’s successor picked Füllkrug, who began scoring.

Werder won promotion and by the time league football broke up for the World Cup this month, “Fülle” was the Bundesliga’s highest German scorer. He had never played for Germany when coach Hansi Flick picked him for the Qatar squad.

Even Füllkrug’s name, which evokes the filling of a beer jug (“Krug”), has a throwback quality that appeals to nostalgic German football fans. He is a figure from the national past who was thought to have died out: the Neuner, the goalscoring number nine. Though not a great Neuner like Uwe Seeler or Miroslav Klose,  Füllkrug does resemble another sandy-haired, 6ft 2in agricultural centre-forward from the early 1980s: Horst Hrubesch — Das Ungeheuer, “The Monster”.

The gap-toothed Füllkrug is the kind of inelegant German footballer who once prompted the country’s former coach Berti Vogts to lament that Germans dance “like refrigerators.” But refrigerators have their uses. To score against Spain Füllkrug dispossessed a teammate, the England-raised 19-year-old dribbler Jamal Musiala, yet another Bayern sophisticate, and then simply bashed the ball home. Germany’s keeper Manuel Neuer, also from Bayern, praised him, a touch patronisingly, as “an instinct player”. 

That seems to be the German coaching staff’s view, too. They might start the noble savage against Costa Rica, a game Germany intend to spend around the opposition’s penalty area, but his interpretation of spaces isn’t considered sufficiently sophisticated for more difficult games.

But then sophistication hasn’t been working for Germany. The other forwards have shot like midfield players, or in Müller’s case, not at all in the first two games. The defence conceded two soft goals in the opening defeat against Japan.

Team captain Ilkay Gündoğan, honouring German football’s tradition of bashing team-mates in public, said of the second: “I don’t know whether an easier goal has ever been scored at a World Cup”, and grumbled: “One had the feeling that not everyone absolutely wanted the ball.”

In part, this is a problem of quality. Hardly any good German players were born between 1991 and 2000. Today’s defenders, Niklas Süle and Nico Schlotterbeck, might not have been picked as ballboys in 2014. That leaves Germany reliant on oldies. Even with Jamal Musiala, the average age of the starting XI against Spain was over 28 — Germany’s oldest team at a World Cup since 2002.

Still, never rule out the Germans. A “tournament team” can instantly forget bad performances, like the last half-hour against Japan, and have the footballing intelligence to meld modernity and tradition into a new system. Eventually, most culture wars get resolved. For example, today’s match will be refereed by the first all-female refereeing team in the history of the men’s World Cup.