What annoys all soccer coaches and all players the most before big tournaments?
When they are confronted with exaggerated expectations and especially when everyone who feels called to give their personal assessment is the best.
And what do all soccer coaches and all players do after their careers?
Exactly that, of course.
A saying by Franz Beckenbauer has become legendary, how could it be otherwise.
After winning the World Cup in 1990, he immediately loaded a heavy rucksack on his successor Berti Vogts: “If the players from the GDR come along, we will be unbeatable for years.” Well, as everyone knows, that didn't quite work.
For the current German team, other comparisons have to be made, but if you search for a long time, you will find something suitable.
Before the start of the tournament, Jürgen Klinsmann, Joachim Löw's predecessor, remembered the sensational Greek winners from 2004, naturally as optimistically as usual.
“They were much further away from being favorites than we were,” he says, which is absolutely correct because never before has a subsequent European champion been so much an outsider as the Greeks were back then. Otto Rehhagel had given them a tactic that at some point took all opponents out of their moods. “We have to have the title as our goal,” says Klinsmann, the unshakable one.
So take courage - and if Michael Ballack, not a proven Löw friend, the German team will need him too: “We are under pressure after the embarrassing qualifying round at the World Cup. Reputation is at stake, ”says the playmaker who was divorced in 2010. And of course the fans are also skeptical: Only 11 percent believe they will reach the finals, and 6.8 percent believe that their team will win the European Championship. Probably still more than back then in Greece.