The premiere had already been postponed by a day.

And on Friday, too, the news from the Frankfurt DFB headquarters was a little long in coming.

When the veil was lifted in the early afternoon, the first written testimony of the Hansi Flick era was on the table, ready for interpretation and commentary.

Christian Kamp

Sports editor.

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"National coach Flick appoints three newcomers and five returnees" was sober above the strictly informative press release, and the German Football Association distributed a six-minute video in which the new national coach gave a cursory insight into his considerations. The resulting impression: Flick must have had a lot of conversations with players, club coaches, his coaching team, the U-21 national coach, "Conversations that meant a lot to me," as Flick said.

The result is a roster that is as much a reflection on the tried and tested as it is the encouragement to do something new - the latter being a little more visible than was generally expected.

The three newcomers who are mainly responsible for this are David Raum from TSG Hoffenheim, Nico Schlotterbeck from SC Freiburg, both at home on the defensive, and attacker Karim Adeyemi from FC Red Bull Salzburg.

All three had won the European title with the U-21 selection at the beginning of June, as did Florian Wirtz (Bayer Leverkusen) and Ridle Baku (VfL Wolfsburg), who have at least some previous experience with the A-team, albeit without (Wirtz) respectively with only one international match (Baku).

It remains to be seen who will actually be used in the three upcoming World Cup qualifiers on Thursday in St. Gallen against Liechtenstein, on Sunday in Stuttgart against Armenia and then on the following Wednesday in Reykjavik against Iceland.

As a reminder: Flick's term of office not only begins with a competitive game, the new national coach already starts with a mortgage.

After the embarrassing 1: 2 against North Macedonia in March, the German team is only third in qualifying group J after North Macedonia and Armenia after three matchdays, and since only the first qualifies directly for the World Cup, any further slip could have extremely unpleasant consequences.

Flick should therefore initially send a team that has been tried and tested in competition into the race.

Reus returns, Sané can prove himself

With the eight Bavarians who belong to his squad, Flick knows what he has in them, that goes for Thomas Müller anyway, but apparently also for Leroy Sané, from whom the coach will hope that he will also get the best out of the trust-building Measure the nomination makes. The returnees are Baku and Wirtz, who did not make it into Joachim Löw's EM squad, Marco Reus and Mahmoud Dahoud from Borussia Dortmund and Thilo Kehrer from Paris Saint-Germain.

Especially from Reus, who did not participate in the European Championship, Flick seems to be promising a lot again, he had recently described him as "one of the best in this position" at his inaugural press conference. In addition to Mats Hummels, who take knee problems out of the game for the time being, his BVB colleague Emre Can as well as Mario Götze and Julian Draxler were not taken into account.

In the video, Flick spoke about the breadth of the squad, at least 26 strong, and about the fact that he really wanted to see players like Schlotterbeck or Raum in the circle of the team, but strategic things were left out.

But apparently Flick is planning Joshua Kimmich, unlike at the EM, again as six in the central midfield, and after Löw's unsuccessful attempt with the three-man chain, a four-man defensive row should be the first choice again.

"That's the plan at the moment," said Flick, according to the German press agency.

His official closing remarks were a reference to what is possible, but even more to what is necessary for this: "It is important that the team shows what quality it has - because it is of enormous quality."