The downfall of German football has been remarkable to watch.

When Die Mannschaft won football’s ultimate prize in 2014, it was the culmination of a process that had taken over a decade, and looked set to compete at the top of the game for years to come. The majority of that squad were just hitting their peaks, and had at least one, if not two, World Cup cycles left in them. Of those who didn’t, Per Mertesacker was already in the process of being replaced, losing his place in the team when Mats Hummels regained fitness, and Toni Kroos was ready to step up and replace Bastian Schweinsteiger. Then there was Philipp Lahm, whose retirement did cause chaos and confusion until the rise of Joshua Kimmich, in many ways a neo-Lahm, in 2016. The future of German football looked set, which was worrying for the rest of the world.

Since 2014, Germany crashed out of the Group Stage of the 2018 World Cup in Russia; something they had previously never done. They repeated the failure in 2022. And now in 2026, having progressed just one round further, they lost on penalties, something else they had previously never done at a World Cup, to a Paraguay side who exposed their lack of cohesion. It would be a catastrophic run for any major footballing nation. For Germany, with a reputation founded on ruthless efficiency, at first glance it’s baffling.

Das Reboot

To understand the present, we must first understand the past. Germany have been in trouble before, although perhaps not quite as disastrously. Having finished bottom of their group at Euro 2000, even losing to an embarrassing England side, the whole game decided to have a rethink. Decades of German football had been built on what we might now call the Beckenbauer model; a single, powerful midfield general who drove his team to glory. Der Kaiser fulfilled that role in the 1960s and 70s. As his star waned, Paul Breitner returned from his self-imposed exile in Spain to take on that mantle. And by the end of the 1980s, it was Lothar Matthäus. German dominance, dictated from midfield.

After the debacle in 2000, Germany had a rethink. It’s a remarkable moment of clarity; having won a major tournament just four years earlier, German football decided to tear up decades of received wisdom and start again. It’s a ruthlessness that other major nations could benefit from. They turned away from a general, and to a professor.

Ralf Rangnick is much maligned in England for an underwhelming spell at Manchester United, but that is to miss the point of Ralf Rangnick. As a coach, he is questionable. As a strategist, he is perhaps insurmountable. In 1998, he had captured the imaginations of Germany’s football thinkers when he appeared on television with a whiteboard and some tokens, and explained what we now know as gegenpressing. It sent a lightning bolt through German football, and it required the team working in concert, not relying on a single superstar. It was radical, and after 2000, the DFB started to adopt his ideas, a process that accelerated in 2006 with the appointment of Matthias Sammer as DFB Sporting Director.

Rangnick’s system became the standard at which German football, as a whole, would aim. Pretty much every German club started training their players to press hard and high, every major academy started producing players with a deep understanding of this new style.

Alongside that, the DFB took a look over the border and liked what they saw. Clairefontaine had produced some of the best footballers in the world; Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka, William Gallas came through the central footballing school. Latterly, it has produced the likes of Medhi Benatia, Blaise Matuidi, and the crown jewel, Kylian Mbappe.

The German FA set up football schools throughout Germany too, along that model. Linked to the top 36 clubs in German football, but all under Sammer’s direction following Rangnick’s influence, all learning the same style of football.

It was a slow process. Hosting the World Cup in 2006, Germany worried about embarrassment. They appointed a showman in Jürgen Klinsmann to lead the side, but underneath the flashy side of the new manager, they knew they needed a tactician. Rangnick was first choice to be Klinsmann’s assistant, but when he turned it down they turned to Joachim Löw, a man cut from the same cloth. It was the first real test of what Die Mannschaft were building, and while not winning the tournament, it showed signs of promise, making its way to the semi-finals before being eliminated by ultimate winners Italy in extra time. It was seen as proof of concept.

The progress was slow, and at times frustrating. By 2012, Germany were ready to win, but the national team wasn’t quite there. Questions were asked of then coach Joachim Löw’s rigid adherence to his mentor’s system as the Germans lost out to Italy, who then lost to an all-conquering Spain side. But by 2014, it all clicked into place. Germany were all in on heavy metal football, culminating in the 7-1 demolition of Brazil in the semi-finals and ultimately lifting the trophy against Lionel Messi’s Argentina.

And then, it all changed.

The Barca-Bayern Blueprint

Bayern Munich, on the back of winning the treble in 2013, turned to Pep Guardiola to continue their success. He was, and is, a man who has strict, immovable principles, but especially off the back of his untrammelled success at Barcelona his belief in tiki-taka was at an all-time high. You can’t blame a man like that for bringing his beliefs into German football, but you can maybe look at Bayern for bringing them in.

The impact was clearly not immediate; 12 months later, Germany were world champions, and Löw undeniably assimilated a little of Pep’s system; but the eventual collapse was inevitable. ‘Guardiola brought ideas regarding possession of the ball, high pressing, and positioning that changed how the entire Bundesliga thought about the game,’ the World Cup winning manager would say as Pep left Germany.

But, long term, tiki-taka simply does not work with gegenpressing. The former is offensive football played defensively, the latter is defensive football played offensively. Bayern, as expected, and parts of the Bundesliga, adopted the style of their new coach; the only man in world football who can match, and arguably surpass, Rangnick for tactical influence. And as Bayern provides the backbone of the German national team, Die Mannschaft has become a petri dish for the problems caused by that clash of styles.

The biggest example of this is the lack of a dedicated centre forward. Germany have made something of an art of producing them in the past. Der Boss; Helmut Rahn (whose 1954 goals and accompanying Herbert Zimmerman commentary are to Germany what Geoff Hurst and Kenneth Wolstenholme are to England), Uns Uwe; Uwe Seeler, Der Bomber; Gerd Müller, the aforementioned Klinsmann, and recently dethroned as all-time leading World Cup goalscorer, Miroslav Klose.

This is a problem that runs through European football at the moment, the dominance of tiki-taka has produced a plethora of 10s, and tricky inside forwards. Every young player wants to be Messi or Mbappe, and until very recently, every coach wanted them to be. This has bled into the DFB coaching too, which has become too rigidly systematic, producing the technical brilliance of a Florian Wirtz without the focus on individual innovation that is required at the very top.

No-Man’s Land

But in Germany it highlights their loss of identity to a Spanish model. Which wouldn’t be a problem in itself, except that the Spanish model was never wholeheartedly adopted. They ended up in a middle ground that fulfilled neither tactical principle. They hold the ball too long, so their transition is too slow, but they don’t have the game management and control of their Iberian rivals, so they are vulnerable to the counter-attack. Against Paraguay, they had 75% possession, 92% pass accuracy, and ultimately a defeat.

Euro 2016 saw them reach the semi-finals again, losing to France, but by 2018, the rot had set in. Group round elimination in Russia was followed at Euro 2020 by an utterly rudderless performance against England to be eliminated in the Round of 16. Another group stage exit in Qatar in 2022, and then a quarter-final defeat at Euro 2024, at which they were hosts. Not even matching their World Cup performance of 2006, which was expected to be a disaster. And now, in 2026, a Round of 32 penalty defeat. Identity crisis, confirmed.

Julian Nagelsmann is the unfortunate inheritor of this problem, but will undoubtedly pay the price for it. It would be naive to ignore the problems of his own making as well, criticising players, selection gambles, and while we’re at it, that god-awful t-shirt. But the problems run far deeper than one man.

German football fans seem unanimously to have decided his successor already; the ultimate doyen of Rangnick’s direction, Jürgen Klopp. He has been doing punditry at the World Cup, making his presence feel even more inevitable. But it’s questionable whether he will be able to turn the tide on his own. He will have an extremely limited time to get his players playing how he wants; something that makes micromanagement specialists like him and Pep unsuitable for international football. And the failure is systemic, not down to one man, however much the finger will be pointed at Nagelsmann.

German football once more needs reinvention, and that will require all of German football to pull in the same direction, not one man at the top trying to fit square pegs into round holes, however exciting he makes it look.

Germany in 2014, like Spain in 2010, conquered the world in the ultimate show of identity football. In the twelve years that have followed, they have tried to be all things to all people, and have ended up being nothing to nobody.

Do they have the political will to start again?