‘What does success look like for this Germany team?’published at 17:59 BST
17:59 BST
Germany v Curacao (18:00 BST)
Raphael Honigstein
German football journalist on BBC Radio 5 Live
The interesting question that everyone’s asking themselves, and I think even the German FA are not quite sure, is what does success look like for this team?
It used to be the case that we’d go to the Word Cup thinking unless we win it this is a disappointment. We have this saying, a good Germany team wins the World Cup, a bad one goes to the final but that’s no longer the case.
We’ve had two group stage exits back-to-back, now I think people are trying to figure out, is a quarter-final enough? Is that progress? Is that keeping the level of the Euros where we got knocked out by Spain?
This time time we could play France if we both win our groups. Is that a realistic target? Or do Germany, even when we’re not quite at our best and we don’t have the strongest team, can we be so satisfied, so humble in the sense that we say ‘this is good enough for us’. That is the question that is being asked.