As the EURO 2016 is coming closer, it’s time to take a glance at the German national team
In Bochum, home of minifootball, the preparations are in full swing. The journey for players, coach and staff will start on Friday, meaning the German nationals will be one of the first teams to arrive in Hungary. They’ll definitely have to take advantage of the early arrival to spend their time with well planned pre-tournament days.
EMF Vice President and German Minifootball President Christoph Köchy is aware of the competitions high level as well and is and cutting back big expectations. Even he is not considering Germany “as the biggest challenger for the European title.“
“Though we achieved really good results in the last years“ he continues. “But I think you could call Romania and the Czech Republic as odds-on favorites. The first and most important goal should be getting through the group stage. Afterwards everything is possible.“
The teams latest result wasn’t convincing. The away friendly against Poland didn’t go as well as head-coach Marc Müller hoped it would. His side conceded a four goals while just scoring one in their trip to Warsaw.
“We didn’t have a good preparation this year because of having big changes in our squad we actually didn’t want to have. So we have a pretty new team again which needs to find their balance. In Warsaw we could see that there is a lot of work for us, so that it will be really important to use the preparation time in Hungary to become very effective,” he said.
The squad under Müller’s direction was stocked up a lot of players of the U21-Team, and he this isnt ideal: The team even includes some youngsters without European Championship experience, so the whole group must give a helping hand to these guys”.
The German head-coach wants to take it step by step and play the best game possible by relying on a mix of experienced players like Tigin Yaglioglu and Micha Alexander, who are constantly making appearances on high international level since 2013, and the huge will of learning of the motivated U21 rookies. “But at first we have to work hard and to improve our game.”
The German national team will face Greece for a pre-tournament friendly on 20th August in the evening and are looking forward to meet old friends and rivals at the EURO 2016 in Hungary.