Hansi Flick, the master builder: Now the difference to Löw becomes clear

When Oliver Bierhoff introduced the new coach to the German national soccer team in August, he chose a place with great symbolic power: the shell of the DFB Academy in Frankfurt am Main. The statement that Bierhoff apparently wanted to convey with it: We are building something completely new, the basic framework is already in place – now we still have to fill it with life.

The DFB, founded at the time of the German Empire, as a start-up and with Hansi Flick as the new project manager. That was the experimental setup.

Today, less than two months later, DFB director Bierhoff, 53, already wants to see significant progress. There is a spirit of optimism, “a positive spirit” blows through the team, the players went about their work with “joy and conviction”, Bierhoff reported on Wednesday in Hamburg.

In September, the team coached by Hansi Flick won their three World Cup qualifiers against Liechtenstein, Armenia and Iceland and took over the lead in Group J. Now the next competitive games are on: on Friday in Hamburg’s Volkspark Stadium against Romania (8.45 p.m., RTL and TV Now) and on Monday in Skopje against North Macedonia.

In fact, Hansi Flick, 54, caused a change in mood in the German team in the few weeks he was there. When Bierhoff was asked how different Flick was from his predecessor Joachim Löw, he tried to avoid a clear answer. Any word he said could be interpreted as a criticism of Löw, so Bierhoff probably took refuge in a rush: “Every coach has his own strengths.”

In the aftermath, however, he did provide a little hint: While Löw made his decisions in the closest circle with his two assistant coaches, Flick relied on an expanded group of coaches. “He lets his people free,” said Bierhoff, “Hansi lets them do the work.”

Löw’s quirkiness and Flick’s pragmatism

Flick himself likes to emphasize that he is only one coach among many in the national team. Although he has the last word, he always stays close with his confidants when it comes to personnel and tactics.

Unlike Löw, Flick is obsessed with working on details with the team and preparing them very precisely. Löw, on the other hand, often considered discussions of tactics to be unnecessary; before the European Championship round of 16 against England (0: 2) he even claimed that big games were decided not by systems but by individual players.

Löw’s quirkiness contrasts sharply with Flick’s pragmatism. The new national coach has recognized that his team has weaknesses in set pieces – especially when they own the ball. So he brought in Mads Buttgereit, a free kick specialist from Denmark whose work he has been following for years. Flick brought his assistant Danny Röhl with him from FC Bayern, who looks at a football game like a game of chess and always thinks a few moves ahead.

It is not yet possible to reliably assess whether the specialization, which is mainly known from US sport, has already made significant improvements to the national team. What is certain, however, is that Flick’s meticulous work is well received by the players. Löw’s laissez-faire and his belief in the principle of genius only had a paralyzing effect in the last three years of his tenure. Löw spoke strongly to his team – but nobody really knew what this self-confidence should actually be based on. Again and again there were terrifyingly weak games like the 0: 6 against Spain or the 1: 2 home defeat against the football dwarf North Macedonia. But Löw continued to sip his espresso with relish and conjured up a golden future.

It is thanks to Hansi Flick that the Löw era seems to have passed a long time ago. The team is pushing, they want to dominate their games – Flick coached FC Bayern and led him to six titles in one season. Flick is now continuing with the DFB with the same vigor. The big goal is the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Captain Manuel Neuer has already said that he wants to become world champion. And that Hansi knows how to win big titles.