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Felix Magath: The one the DFB needs at the moment?

Photo: Marcus Brandt / picture alliance / dpa

Former Bundesliga coach Felix Magath has submitted his application for the vacant job as national football coach. The German Football Association now needs a coach who is able to rebuild the "completely unsettled national team," the 70-year-old told radio station NDR 90.3. And I think I'm in a position to lift up unsettled teams and give them enough confidence to perform very well again."

"In some cases, I've led teams from the bottom of the table to midfield or even back to the top of the Bundesliga," said Magath: "And I think that's what the DFB needs at the moment."

"I don't know what requirement profile the DFB has created for this position," Magath said. "But in my opinion, it's clearly the case that we urgently need someone in football who can put this completely insecure team, which is no longer able to reach its potential, back together." He has the confidence to take on this task.

Just recently, Magath criticized the state of German football in an interview with SPIEGEL. For years, the wrong priorities have been set in the work with young talent. It's not about tactics, it's about the individual players.

After parting ways with Hansi Flick, ex-national player Dietmar Hamann had brought Magath into the conversation as a possible new national coach. "That's exactly the kind of man we need. And I could imagine that Felix would do that immediately," said the Sky expert of the German Press Agency. As a coach, Magath had won the championship twice with FC Bayern and once with VfL Wolfsburg. Most recently, he took over the then Bundesliga club Hertha BSC in mid-March 2022. He was able to save the Berliners from relegation in the relegation, then he left the club.

Once Rudi Völler

The DFB had relieved the previous national coach Hansi Flick of his duties on Sunday, and a team led by sporting director Rudi Völler, Hannes Wolf and Sandro Wagner has taken over on an interim basis. Völler said again on Monday that he took the assignment as an emergency helper on the coach's bench "as a one-time thing". His task is to find the right man – and to support him.

In addition to Magath, other coaches had already brought themselves into the game – or cancelled before they were even asked. For example, the former world champion and current Sky expert Lothar Matthäus told the "Bild" that the post as national coach was not what he imagined. His life plans look different.

Matthäus, on the other hand, publicly claimed that Matthias Sammer, advisor to Borussia Dortmund, would like to do the job. However, the Sports Information Service reports, citing Sammer's "closest environment", that the 1996 European champion is not available.

And Louis van Gaal, former Bayern coach and national coach of the Netherlands, said on Sky: "I am honoured to be named as one of the candidates. But no foreigner has ever been selected for the post of national coach in Germany."

The biggest solution would be Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp, followed directly by former Bayern coach Julian Nagelsmann. In addition to Nagelsmann and Klopp, all sorts of other names are circulating as Flick's successors. But neither the former U21 national coach and current Turkish national team coach Stefan Kuntz, nor the Austrian Oliver Glasner, after all European Cup winner with Eintracht Frankfurt, fit the profile. Roger Schmidt, a former confidant of Völler in Leverkusen and most recently very successful at Benfica Lisbon, is said to have a high release clause in Portugal.

PTZ/DPA/SID