Of the pre-2020 Bayern Munich contingent, Philipp Lahm has taken perhaps the most interesting career choices. He was offered the sporting director’s job following retirement which he promptly turned down. He instead chose to start a holding company and continued to run his charitable foundation. Lahm came to the football side of things a little later — serving as the tournament director of the UEFA Euro 2024 after leading the bid for Germany to host. He has written books and columns, particularly
on The Athletic in the past two years.
Through his writing, he has been extremely vocal since the World Cup began. Following Germany’s exit from the round of 32 against Paraguay, Lahm wrote a column in The Athletic about where it all went wrong for Germany. Here are the key points from his piece.
The German identity
The central point of his thesis was identity. According to Lahm, Germany lacks a singular stable identity and so did manager Julian Nagelsmann.
“Across the whole tournament, there was no stable, structured team performance from Germany. No sense of a path we were actually trying to take towards success. For a country with our footballing history, that is not enough,” Lahm wrote. Early in the column, he brings in comparisons, citing Argentina, Brazil, France, and Spain as examples of teams with stable identities. “For the top teams, the way of playing doesn’t keep changing,” Lahm argued.
“We keep treating the symptoms. We change the system, the line-up, the players’ positions, far too often. We are in a permanent debate about how Germany actually wants to play. And yet Germany was always at its strongest when it took the individual quality it had, married it to a robust, assertive mentality, put its best players on the pitch and forged them into a real unit.”
Julian Nagelsmann’s “identity crisis”
Bringing this argument further, he now knocks down Julian Nagelsmann’s door. He has two arguments on why the manager couldn’t carry the responsibility.
Firstly, he states that a national team’s coach needs composure, implying that Nagelsmann’s demeanor was not appropriate for his position.
Second, he argues that the manager is unsure of what he needs to do with the team. That what Nagelsmann wants to play, simply does not fit the players he had. Lahm claims that with every detail and every move, it became evident that the manager had no clear plan.
Tactically speaking, he states that possession-based football is simply unsuitable, and that Germany’s true identity lies in a fast-paced game — which served them well for years. So Germany’s primary objective must be to identify how they want to play, before they identify their next manager. Create stable hierarchies by identifying a core group that remains unchanged. Here, he suggests that Joshua Kimmich play in central midfield, Kai Havertz up front, and Florian Wirtz in attacking midfield.
Lahm’s takes on Paraguay
He further addressed the predicament Germany were in, against Paraguay. “… there has been no continuous development,” the 42-year-old said, to explain that the team had no growth despite their advancement in the tournament. He voices that Germany was far too stale and passive in their play — leaving Paraguay comfortable to park the bus. Interestingly, Lahm, unlike most, took a more sympathetic approach to Leroy Sané, stating that the winger was isolated for long stretches and had no one to run behind him.
Lahm then rejects a dominant narrative that emerged after the defeat.
“And no — this did not come down to the referee. The disallowed goal was a harsh decision, and to my mind a wrong one, but you cannot let the night hang on that. You have to settle the game long before it comes down to a single moment.”
Lahm then explains how he would have set up this game. “Wirtz through the middle, where he can move freely and play his passes into space, as he did at Bayer Leverkusen, because out on the flank he was lost. Kimmich in midfield, where he belongs, rather than at right-back. And I’d want a genuine defender at the back, someone who is hard to get past,” he said. This leads to his second major argument. The defense.
Is the art of defending lost on us?
He laments that the German defense’s golden reputation of being unbeatable was gone, and that the art of defending, as a whole was lost on the sport. He attributes the number of goals in the tournament, not entirely to a better quality of attack, but to the falling quality of defense. Stating that duels, timing, and the willingness to throw oneself into tackles was no longer being taught in Germany or elsewhere, Lahm brings in a comparison with South American players. “When you watch how the South American players throw themselves into their duels, you see the difference at once,” he stressed.
Concluding thoughts
Towards the end, Lahm reiterates his thesis. He strongly believes that a uniform German footballing identity must be built from the grassroots — from the Bundesliga, right up to the national team. “First, the idea. Then everything else. That will allow a football we recognise as our own to grow back. Restoring that matters far more than any single appointment,” he declared emphatically.
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