Oliver Bierhoff: National team “doesn’t have an identity yet”

Long-time national team manager Oliver Bierhoff does not see national coach Julian Nagelsmann’s team among the title candidates at next year’s World Cup. “You don’t have an identity yet. You couldn’t say now: What is the German national team’s current sporting line? Where you say: I know, I’ll tune in. That’s what I get. That’s still a bit of a surprise bag,” said Bierhoff in the Sky program “Triple – the Hagedorn Football Talk”.

Other countries are even better staffed, said Bierhoff. There are “two absolutely exceptional players” in Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz, as well as Kai Havertz, Joshua Kimmich, Serge Gnabry and Leon Goretzka, but behind them there are inexperienced players. When it came to winning the 2014 World Cup, it was a team with a “winning mentality” that had already won a lot before.

Oliver Kahn sees it similarly, and he doesn’t use the 2024 European Championship in his own country as a benchmark with the unfortunate quarter-final knockout against Spain. “If I don’t function as a player, if I don’t grow beyond myself, then I don’t know where that will be the case,” said the former vice world champion. Since then, however, the development that was actually desired has not occurred.

“I’m still unsure what we actually want,” said Kahn. A lot will change. “To say at the moment: We’re going there now, we have the quality, we have the system. Everything fits. I think we’re a long way from that,” said the former Bayern CEO.