DFB team under Jürgen Klopp: The mood is right

Oh how nice it must be to be able to spend a week with Jürgen Klopp! For the national coach and the German footballers who received an invitation from him, there was really little reason to be happy after this embarrassing 1-0 defeat against Greece. But this one week together “in camp”, as they say, no one can take that away from them.

Not only Hennes Behrens from FC Augsburg, one of the many new recruits, raved about the atmosphere in the Herzogenaurach training camp after he was able to collect the first international minutes of his 21-year-old life. And he also raved about Jürgen Klopp. He is an “incredible person”, a “super personality”. Now you just have to stick with it, bring intensity to the pitch and everything will be fine.

That will be difficult. He's not allowed to stay there himself. With a few exceptions, everyone who took part in the first two international matches under Jürgen Klopp has returned home. Squad 2 can now move into the camp and experience a few nice days with Jürgen Klopp. Joshua Kimmich finds this somewhat strange. The captain will be missing when Germany play Serbia at their home stadium in Munich on Thursday evening. “I kind of hoped to stay until the end.” He seems to have liked the camp too.

He commented on the defeat with the routine of a player who has often had to explain the failure of a DFB team: "It wasn't like we had to lose it. But it wasn't like we deserved a win." Who would want to contradict that?

The 31-year-old gave a lot to live up to his role as the leader on the pitch, repeatedly getting close to the ball and distributing balls. When the Greeks scored in the 74th minute, he was the one who deflected Dimitrios Kourbelis' shot. Of course that was particularly annoying. He now has memories of a week in which he met a lot of new guys and in which the mood was “definitely better” than in the minutes after the defeat against Greece. Oh yes, the camp!

Kimmich was one of the few who spoke about the situation in Group B of the Nations League after the game. Because with all the Kloppomania in the past few days, that could easily have been forgotten. The Nations League is a Uefa competition that has an award ceremony at the end with a shower of confetti and a nice trophy for the winner.

Now the Germans are in third place in their group with a meager point from the opening game against the Netherlands, ahead of pointless Serbia. "We now have to make sure we win the next games because we obviously want to come first or second. At best we wanted to come first, now the place is far away." But what does we mean here? Those from squad 2 have to sort it out now.

But should they even do that? Jürgen Klopp himself, who only enjoyed a few moments of winning the ball in the first 15 minutes after the break, decided not to take the competition seriously with his idea of ​​nominating over 40 players for the first international window under his aegis. He just wants to try things out and get to know a few more “grown-up boys,” as he said.

How strange this decision is was felt after the game in Augsburg. Sunday's losers would love to make up for what they screwed up themselves. Jonathan Tah, for example, said that it was now about “gaining experiences as a team and learning from these experiences”. Now he is no longer part of the team for two games. He would certainly have liked to stay in the camp too. The defense chief of the day raved about “how good the week was, how well we worked together, how well it worked, how well we implemented things in such a short time.” On Monday, other players will make up this team.

They will then have to, no, be allowed to prepare for a game in this wonderful camp in which the opponents will probably defend in a “deep block” again. Klopp said after the game that playing someone like that was the hardest thing in football. But he explicitly assured that it was possible. The football nation remains excited.