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German media has reacted in shock and dismay at the early exit of their world number two women’s team from the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
For the first time in their history, the Germans – two time champions in 2003 and 2007 – failed to make it out of the group stage.
Just eight months after the men’s team, Die Mannschaft, was dumped out of the Qatar World Cup in the group stages for the second consecutive tournament, it presents an awful new low for the perennial powerhouse of both the men’s and women’s game.
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It wasn’t meant to be like this. Germany were one of the hot favourites to go deep into the tournament if not win it all, coming off the back of a 2022 European Championships where they finished runners-up to England after extra-time in the final.
And their opening match of this tournament was a dominant 6-0 win over Morocco, who remarkably ended up claiming second place in the group ahead of third-place Germany.
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Players were in floods of tears on the pitch after their draw with South Korea saw them dumped out. Germany captain Alexandra Popp was at a loss for words after the match in Brisbane, saying the exit was “incomprehensible”.
“I don’t even know what to say” Popp told Germany’s ZDF after her side’s 1-1 draw with South Korea meant they suffered their earliest ever World Cup exit.
“I can’t quite understand what happened here.”
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A “shocked” German coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg said her side showed “a great sense of insecurity” in the match, with underdogs South Korea taking the lead after just six minutes.
Star midfielder Lena Oberdorf, tipped for a breakout tournament by many, said the loss was “surreal”.
“We made it too easy for our opponent … the disappointment is huge, I can’t put it into words.”
Tabloid Bild published an editorial moments after the loss, saying Germany had gone from giants of the game to “footballing dwarves”.
“The sports world is laughing at us,” the tabloid wrote, saying Germany’s days of being “a feared tournament team” were “long ago”.
“It is not just arrogance and a lack of imagination, but a lack of quality.” German politicians also weighed in, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz tweeting “unfortunately it wasn’t enough in the end. The next chance will come”.
Bild headlined another article: “Our football is in ruins”, decrying: “2 Horror World Cups in 8 months”.
Spiegel called their exit a “Deja vu … which brought about the worst result in Germany’s World Cup history”.
De Ziet, another major newspaper, declared: “The German football crisis is now also female.”
It wrote: “Germany has talented female footballers, but they don’t play well together. That’s why we’re eliminated so early. The parallel to men cannot be overlooked.”
In another story, Bild revealed that the German football association DBF had made no contingency plans for the women’s team to exit the tournament so early – and so have booked no tickets for flights home.
The team travelled to its base in Wyong today, where they were set to stay for the remainder of the World Cup had they won their group. Now, they are facing a major logistic problem.
Currently, many flights to Germany are full, meaning the team has no set departure date and may have to depart in small groups whenever tickets are available.
