Almost two weeks ago, school started in the state of Bavaria after the summer holidays. A few days later, a large group of young men came together in Herzogenaurach, Central Franconia, who were no longer of school age, but for whom, in a sense, a new phase of life was beginning. They should also learn – learn for life in the new German national football team.
Your new football teacher Jürgen Klopp has already taught in Mainz, Dortmund and abroad in Liverpool, sometimes with considerable success. Now he has chosen 44 students to whom he would like to impart his knowledge of the game in less than two weeks. “Lesson one for our future together” was immediately on the timetable: “We learn to have fun under pressure.”
What the opponents should learn: that they don't enjoy pressure. Putting pressure on an opponent who wins the ball, anytime and anywhere, is part of his teachings. In the specialist literature it is called counter-pressing: a vocabulary that every Klopp student should know inside and out, which is so significant for the way his teams play that it became part of general football parlance in England without any translation.
There wasn't much time until the first test. The first test was on Thursday evening, just a few days after the meeting in Herzogenaurach, with the opening game of the Nations League in the Netherlands. The result of 1:1 had a somewhat bitter note from a German perspective. After Felix Nmecha's opening goal in the 32nd minute, the Dutch only equalized in stoppage time through Cody Gakpo.
Still, Klopp didn't want to be too strict. His players didn't know the right answer to every question the Dutch asked, but the effort was evident. That was also an aspect that the new national coach conveyed. He accepted that some people got lost on the solution. “The processes cannot yet be natural,” he said. The old ones are just learned, from the clubs or the earlier version of the national team.
It will take time for Klopp's counter-pressing and other tactical ideas to become second nature. Time that is rare in football but that Klopp wants to give. “When you are learning, there is a moment when you briefly know which vocabulary you learned in the morning,” he said. "You'll still know it at lunchtime. But it wouldn't be bad if you looked at it again the next day." And the next vocabulary test will definitely come.
Two players will be excused for the time being. Jamal Musiala was supposed to start in Amsterdam, but his thigh hurt during the warm-up. Kai Havertz left the pitch after a foul after half an hour, also with an injured thigh. Both will recover in their clubs. For them, national coach Florian Wirtz and Jonathan Burkardt are brought to the DFB team earlier than planned.
Joshua Kimmich said that Klopp placed a “big focus” on the defense in the few teaching hours. “This is the easiest way you can build a foundation in two or three days.” This is how the first principles were developed, with pressing and counter-pressing. Kimmich, who was moved back to midfield under Klopp, has learned the vocabulary.
Anyway, the captain was, as so often, a model student. Before Nmecha's goal, he continued to play unmoved, even though an opponent was obviously injured on the ground. Kimmich knows the rules: Since the referee didn't interrupt, it was legitimate, even if the Dutch were raging.
The German class representative was only marginally interested in the opposing outrage. Kimmich was more interested in initial learning successes. "The best place to get to know each other is always on the pitch. That's the place where you become even closer together," he said. Klopp also contributed to this, with Kimmich describing his speech as “very clear” and “very demanding”. “On the other hand, he also gives us a lot of trust.”
There was also Dutch outrage when Virgil van Dijk's goal was disallowed. The captain scored from a corner, but the referee saw a foul on Marc-André ter Stegen on the video images. The Ajax Amsterdam goalkeeper returned to the national team in his new home stadium and is Klopp's number one “for the moment”. Ter Stegen made a few careless mistakes, but otherwise showed a good performance.
“It’s nice that someone opened their eyes”
This also applied to Philipp Treu, a novice from the Freiburg Football School, who was in the starting line-up straight away and, like Younes Ebnoutalib and Yannik Engelhardt, who came on as a substitute, played his first international match. As a right-back, Treu inherited the German problem position from Kimmich. He later spoke as briskly as Treu forced his opponent Gakpo onto the defensive. “It’s obviously good to hear that someone opened their eyes and looked at Freiburg.” What he meant was Klopp. Because there is obviously a very good right-back there.
Serge Gnabry had to be blamed for a serious mistake. He lost the ball on the halfway line and the counterattack led to the equalizer. Klopp exercised leniency. “It’s not a bad thing, it can happen, it’s not an issue,” he said, “but Serge has to run forward with the ball.” You just don't stop learning, even at 31 years old.
The next tests are coming up soon, Greece awaits in Augsburg this Sunday (8:45 p.m. in the F.A.Z. live ticker for the Nations League and on ARD), followed by the home game against Serbia and the game in Greece until October 4th, and the duel in Serbia and the second leg against the Netherlands in November. With the end of the Nations League group phase there is time for a first interim report.
By then, will the learning progress be great enough to think bigger? One thing is certain: there is still a lot of learning material waiting for the German eleven. Stuff football dreams are made of. The goal: to be a lot better at the European Championships in 2028 and, even more, at the World Cup in the summer of 2030 than we are now. A start has been made. However, it also became obvious in Amsterdam: learning with the new class teacher Jürgen Klopp has only just begun.
