Sad households: Matthäus claims Germany journey plans prompted World Cup rift | World Cup 2026

Lothar Matthäus, the previous Germany captain turned pundit, has blamed the staff’s crushing World Cup defeat by Paraguay partly on the gamers’ dogged efforts to have their households, even dad and mom, in tow, which he mentioned had led to stress throughout the staff and an absence of focus on the soccer.

“While there’s a lot that needs to be processed about what happened on the pitch, what happened off the pitch also needs to be a topic of discussion,” Matthäus mentioned.

The former midfielder captained West Germany to their 1990 World Cup triumph and on the following version of the event within the US. He mentioned the way wherein the gamers took it without any consideration that their households would accompany them reminded him of the talk over gamers’ households in 1994, which he mentioned had proved mightily distracting from the soccer.

“There were documentaries [made] about this topic in ‘94 [and] I don’t think it was that different this time round,” Matthäus mentioned, speaking to the German tabloid Bild. He mentioned having their households with them was “more important for many of [the players] than what took place on the football pitch”.

He mentioned he had little understanding as to why the households got permission to be there. “I really don’t know why they should be there,” particularly for “the first, second and third games”, he mentioned. “They [the players] hadn’t even been in America for two weeks and already their entire families were with them. They could have been flown in for the quarter-finals when the team had actually accomplished something,” he mentioned.

Without naming names he mentioned some gamers had spent numerous their time “looking for travel possibilities, booking hotels. This was a topic of discussion in the team. It’s not appeared in the media … but I know that it was a topic of discussion and that one player was cross with another because he was allowed to bring his mum with him. Another was allowed to bring his wife, then the kids were allowed to fly too.”

Some had flown on the staff’s airplane, he mentioned, “while others had had to take a commercial flight”. As a end result “there was a lot of unrest” which was felt within the dressing room, he claimed, “but which was not conveyed to the outside world, but nevertheless the focus was simply not on the World Cup but on this free day to spend with the family and that free day with the family”.

He inferred that what he referred to as a “similar situation” in 1994 had contributed to Germany’s defeat by Bulgaria within the quarter finals.

Matthäus spoke to many Germans by calling the defeat by Paraguay “just too much to bear”. “We didn’t advance, we didn’t deserve to advance, however sad it is to say that,” he mentioned.

The distress felt was mirrored throughout the net headlines in Germany’s media, and was palpable on individuals’s faces, after nearly 18 million sat down to observe the match, regardless of the ten.30pm CET kick-off.

“There’s nothing left of Germany,” acknowledged a damning headline in Der Spiegel, whereas an opinion piece it carried, titled “The decline of a once great football nation”, mentioned the depressing end result mirrored the final demise of Germany, which finds itself within the financial doldrums.

“For the third time in a row, the German national team has been eliminated early from a World Cup tournament, with its third coach,” wrote the columnist Peter Ahrens. “This can no longer be explained by bad luck or chance. It reflects a fundamental problem. And that problem is devastating. Germany, once a great footballing nation, four-time world champion, has shrunk to a footballing minnow. The elimination against Paraguay, as embarrassing as it seems, is actually the new reality for Germany.”

“Nagelsmann gets an F,” acknowledged the tabloid Bild, because it bemoaned the German head coach Julian Nagelsmann’s lack of ability to just accept any share of the blame.

Splashed over {a photograph} of the Germany staff arriving at Winston-Salem, North Carolina (their base) having flown from Boston, was the chilling caption: “The German losers land. Icy mood”.

Matthäus contributed to the mounting criticism of Nagelsmann and the requires him to go, saying he couldn’t think about how the 38-year-old may stay as nationwide coach, telling Bild: “You have to have a new trainer in order to move on.”

Jürgen Klopp, the much-loved former coach of Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund, didn’t reject the concept he may fill Nagelsmann’s sneakers. But mentioned he was not able to throw his hat into the ring.

“I haven’t thought about that yet,” he mentioned, including he may perceive “that when the national coach is being discussed, my name is mentioned in some form”.

As the nation got here to phrases with the defeat, there was puzzlement over the response on X by the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, with many asking whether or not he had watched the identical match as everybody else.

“Even though being eliminated hurts: What a game!” he wrote, including: “With your dedication and team spirit at this World Cup, you have inspired our country. We are proud of you.”

It led to the phrase “welches spiel?” – which recreation – to development on X in Germany.

His try to spin what Bild summed up as “slow, boring and lethargic” was even picked up by Russian president Vladimir Putin’s confidant Kirill Dmitriev, who used it as a possibility to poke enjoyable at Merz, writing on X: “Merz is good at always encouraging a failure.”

Commentators dwelled specifically at their disgust over the Germans’ obvious nervousness to take part within the penalty shoot out. “The players’ fear of failure was written all over their faces,” wrote the left-leaning every day TAZ. For Bild it was a transparent case of cowardice.

Jonathan Tah had been compelled to take the primary penalty of his profession and the ultimate, decisive one for Germany, solely as a result of different gamers had first hesitated after which managed to keep away from stepping up, it wrote.

“There weren’t enough professionals willing to confidently step up to the penalty spot,” mentioned Bild, including that it was not the primary time “that it became clear the extent to which the team lacked that absolute winning mentality”. The incident was paying homage to Bayern Munich’s Champions League remaining defeat by Chelsea in 2012, when quite a few gamers additionally shied away from taking penalties, it steered.

England’s German head coach, Thomas Tuchel, has been cautious to withhold his ideas on Germany’s efficiency. It stays to be seen whether or not, if he steers England to victory, it may present some solace for Germany, or merely a dose of schadenfreude for England followers.