Germans pose Spain's first true test with a historic weight
True Pose Will Germany's True Test Euro Spain Test: First At 2024
Julian Nagelsmann is suddenly just a little limelight shy. Germany’s manager, a still-young man of wild ambition, keenly aware of his personal brand, is trying to turn it down a little. Good luck with that, Jules.
A fan video went viral in recent days here of Nagelsmann making his way to the stands after the game against Switzerland. Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, a huge star of German TV, is perched on the barrier to greet the coach but is left red-faced when it is, in fact, Nagelsmann’s brother standing behind him who he’s making a beeline for, not the megawatt personality. Boris Becker was among those getting a kick out of Heufer-Umlauf’s awkward exit.
In more recent days, Nagelsmann has eschewed the German media spotlight even more intensely, reporting that the DFB have extended high tarpaulins around the team’s training pitch at the sprawling Adidas campus near Nuremberg and "even the door slots have been [covered]. Passers-by are immediately closely followed by security staff who play loud music on their phones so nothing can be heard from behind the fences.”
This isn’t just a Nagelsmann and German media thing however. For decades now, Spain have taken up floating residency in the heads of Mannschaft-minded folk here. “Spain are our role models,” Joachim Löw admitted, with plenty of envy filtering down through those five words, in 2012.
Two teams who between them won every major title from 2008 through to 2014, it’s unsurprising that they’d think about one another often. Yet what still surprises is how mostly one-sided the relationship is. Spain won three titles to Germany’s one in that spell, while the Germans’ winless run against La Roja at major championships stretches all the way back to another summer on home soil, a group stage victory in Munich at Euro 88.
They reconvene Friday evening in Stuttgart to kick off Euro 2024’s quarter-final weekend with a banger of a contest that many feel could just as well lose the ‘quarter’ because it’s cleaner as simply the ‘final’. The tournament’s joint-favourites, its two highest-scoring teams and indisputably its best performers are, in many neutrals’ view, unfortunately, meeting a full week before the prizes are handed out. But let’s be glad that they’re meeting at all. Major tournaments are delicate and dumbfounding things. How often have they run away from their course without the dream match-up we all wanted?
Do the Spanish want the Germans? Given their current form, Luis de la Fuente’s tantalising young team don’t appear particularly bothered who’s on the other side when the whistle sounds. "I don't want to offend anyone but we have the best team at this tournament,” the manager said. "We are going to fight for it and we know what we have ahead of us, which is Germany.”
No offence should be taken from De la Fuente’s boast. Spain have been irresistibly good here, the young wing wonders Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams taking turns to leave defenders and jaws on the floor, Rodri metronomically magnificent in the middle and finding a fine foil in Fabián Ruiz. But if those four have justified and strengthened hopes for this new Spanish generation, there’s a context in which the rest of the team still needs to be viewed.
Group B can now be seen as the tournament’s second-weakest, the lamentable representatives of E saving it from being worst of all. Italy, Croatia and Albania were all deeply flawed sides. In the last 16, Spain met an exhausted and limited Georgia, delighted to just be there. Friday marks a first true test and one with a historic weight — knockout victories against Germany were the making of the last great Spanish era. In the final of Euro 2008 and semi-final of the 2010 World Cup it was gripping 1-0 victories against the continent’s most successful nation which propelled Spain to new heights.
Fourteen years after that seismic semi-final battle in Durban it’s just a little striking that while only three of the Spaniards who featured then are still playing at all (two in semi-retirement in UAE and MLS), Germany’s hopes Friday will hinge on two who finished the match, Manuel Neuer and Toni Kroos (Thomas Muller was crucially suspended). That is perhaps one of the concerns about De la Fuente’s team — a dearth of seasoned winners.
How much joy Yamal, Williams and Alvaro Morata have against a much sturdier German defence, with Jonathan Tah returning from suspension, will be fascinating but the other end feels more pivotal again. Spain’s defence hasn’t had much of a test. Jamal Musiala will change all that, with help from whichever two of Kai Havertz, Leroy Sane and Florian Witz start, and from captain Ilkay Gundogan too.
This all begs the second, flipped question: do the Germans want the Spanish? Former defender Arne Friedrich has recounted how the mood on the Germany bus en route to Durban Stadium in 2010 was pierced by previous pain against them: "In our subconsciousness, having been beaten by [Spain] before played a part.”
Kroos has scratched many itches on his farewell tour. For he and Neuer this would be a hell of an act of revenge. “We’ve reached a stage that leaves us kind of satisfied, but there’s a huge drive to go further,” he said this week. “We’re convinced we can do it.”
Kroos argued against either side of him being the key battleground. “It’s been my opinion for a long time that games like these are decided in the middle,” he said. Not really one to be argued with, so assuming he is right, his own partner Robert Andrich, who’s dyed his hair shocking pink for this epic occasion, will have to step things up. Huge stakes and fine margins mean one underperformance can be critical.
Perhaps neither team wanted the other just yet. But there’s an argument they each need it. In Stuttgart they’ll have one another. The rest will have to simply be thankful we got it at all.