Stara Pazova – Almost three months before the European Championships in England, the question mark suddenly looms large again: where does German women’s football stand in international comparison?
A surprise first defeat in a World Cup qualifier at 2:3 in Serbia threw the DFB selection back.
National coach Martina Vos-Tecklenburg drew a long list of shortcomings in Stara Pazova for her players, not just for the weak early stage: “It continued for a shocking 90 minutes.” Captain Alexandra Pope tried to change perspective. “Better now than at the European Championships or anywhere else,” said the Wolfsburg woman defensively. “Who knows what it’s good for in the end.”
“What do we take with us?”
Vos-Tecklenburg found it difficult to hide his horror at the performance. “Of course you don’t like to go into a six-week break with a loss,” said the 54-year-old. While in the dressing room, he told the players: “It’s our thing, we have to bear it, stand up and ask: So, what can we learn from this? What do we take with us?”
The European Championship record from 6 July to 31 July is the first major tournament for the European champion and two-time world champion after missing out on the 2019 World Cup quarter-finals and Olympic qualification against Sweden. In the Arnold Clark Cup in February, the Germans remained without victories against Spain, Canada and hosts England. However, due to a dozen failures, it was only of limited use as an endurance test.
Tickets for the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand should not be a problem, given the remaining schedule, with games in Turkey and Bulgaria in September. FC Bayern Munich’s two-time goalkeeper Jovanna Damanjanovic has been around for a disappointing impact against the strong, passionate and straight attacking Serb. In their strong European Championship preliminary round group, the DFB team must prepare for similar resistance against Denmark, Spain and Finland.
too much reverse play
“All in all, there were just too many things,” Voss-Tecklenburg said of his criticisms. Among other things, he criticized “too much backward play overall”, a “very, very high error rate”, game structure, duel rate, poor switching moments, with particular conceded goals. “First and foremost, it should be about mindset, about strength in a duality and brutality,” she said. “Today’s performance was not good in many, many areas.” Goals from Munich’s Le Schuller (60th) and Wolfsburg’s Tabiya Wasmuth (90th+2) did not help much.
“We have to look at ourselves. In principle, this was not enough, both defensively and offensively,” admitted the Pope. The 31-year-old striker was in the starting XI for the first time after a long injury but failed to perform well in the midfield. “I also remembered the passionate leaders on the pitch today,” the national coach said.
From a group of around 35 European Championship candidates, Vos-Tecklenburg will now nominate 28 for the expanded squad for England on 16 May. This should be reduced to 23 players after a Test match on June 24. Now the first thing to do is: “Shake, act, don’t despair, but still address things cleanly.”
