{"id":403661,"date":"2025-09-06T21:56:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T21:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/403661\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T21:56:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T21:56:13","slug":"julian-nagelsmann-says-he-does-not-fear-for-his-job-as-germany-look-to-stop-rot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/403661\/","title":{"rendered":"Julian Nagelsmann says he does not fear for his job as Germany look to stop rot"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the disappointment of losing to both Portugal and France in the Nations League in June, Germany lost their first ever World Cup qualifier away from home when their Group A campaign began with a surprise 2-0 reverse to Slovakia in Bratislava on Thursday.<\/p>\n

That has left Nagelsmann under pressure going into Sunday\u2019s game in Cologne as criticism in the German media hots up.<\/p>\n

\"GermanyGermany suffered a shock defeat in Slovakia (Denes Erdos\/AP).<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be frightened is never a good point,\u201d Nagelsmann said in a press conference on Saturday. \u201cI am still brave enough and I want to win every game. We will try to do our best tomorrow as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team is important, not me. I think we will do a better job than on Thursday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite recent results, Germany remain strong favourites against Michael O\u2019Neill\u2019s side, who are ranked some 62 places below their opponents at 71st in the world.<\/p>\n

However, Nagelsmann admits O\u2019Neill\u2019s men have the weapons to cause his side problems through their direct approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Northern Ireland team has a clear plan,\u201d he said. \u201cThey play a lot of long balls and are very good in attacking second balls. When they win the second ball, they play a really quick, deep pass behind the defence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey try to get as close to the opponents\u2019 goal to score and they have strong set-pieces. That is the most important topic, to avoid those set-pieces and also avoid space behind our defence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not that easy because there are many players in the Northern Ireland team who are used to playing long balls and attacking on the second one. We have a lot of players who are not so used to this way of playing soccer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will try to find the best players for this case tomorrow. We try to be the best competitor possible. We try to win our home game. It is very important for us, for the fans in the stands and also for the qualification for the World Cup, it\u2019s a very important game for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FlorianFlorian Wirtz left the Bundesliga for the Premier League this summer (Peter Byrne\/PA).<\/p>\n

Nagelsmann\u2019s squad includes two players that made big-money moves to the Premier League this summer in Liverpool\u2019s \u00a3116million midfielder Florian Wirtz and Newcastle\u2019s \u00a365million record signing Nick Woltemade.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Bundesliga it\u2019s not perfect when the best young players move to England, but it\u2019s like that at this moment in time,\u201d Nagelsmann said when asked about the deals.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me as the national team coach what\u2019s most important is that they play a lot of minutes and get some good games during the season so they are confident enough to play a role in the national team.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorian is always one of our most important players. He was in the past, now and will be in the future. Nick is a new player for us. He did well for the under-21s and now he has to prove his level and be an important player for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the disappointment of losing to both Portugal and France in the Nations League in June, Germany lost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-403661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115159589562785418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}