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Hansi Flick: "Everything said about it"
Photo: Darius Simka / imago images / regios24
At the end of the press conference, a question was asked about tomorrow's opponents of the German national soccer team Liechtenstein.
This may also have something to do with the clear sporting value of Liechtenstein football, but even more prominent teams would find it difficult to attract media attention at the DFB at the moment.
Since Tuesday you have had the feeling: Corona is currently the more powerful opponent than the footballers from the Principality.
The fuss about the positive test by central defender Niklas Süle and the resulting departure of four other national players who have to go into quarantine has left its mark.
National coach Hansi Flick appeared visibly angry in front of the press: "We imagined everything differently."
"Quite a hectic pace"
On Monday evening, he actually planned to "take all the players with him again for a balance sheet", where you are under flick after five victorious games, and how you intend to prepare for the 2022 World Cup.
Instead, there was "a lot of hectic" after the test result for Süle became known.
The fact that Joshua Kimmich, Karim Adeyemi, Serge Gnabry and Jamal Musiala also had to travel home afterwards cannot be right for someone like Flick, who works on the verge of perfectionism.
"As a coach, I can only wish that things like this no longer happen in the future."
But how exactly this is to be avoided in the future, at this point Flick could not be lured from the reserve.
The national coach did not want to say anything about whether he would only invite players who are definitely vaccinated in the future.
Instead, after two or three inquiries in this direction, he expressed the wish not to be asked about the Corona issue anymore, saying that he had "said everything about it".
The subject, the constant media inquiries about it, quickly annoyed Flick as a coach of FC Bayern.
The current situation, however, is not such that as a national coach you can evade the issue so easily.
So he felt compelled to emphasize: "It is my conviction: the only way to get out of the pandemic is to get vaccinated" - and he added: "Especially in football." You can appeal understand in the direction of the unvaccinated Kimmich.
Even if Flick attached importance to the statement that "at the moment everyone has the right to refuse".
Bierhoff draws a comparison with Enke
The national coach was more cautious than DFB national team director Oliver Bierhoff before him.
At an upstream press conference on the occasion of an award ceremony by the Robert Enke Foundation, Bierhoff tried to draw parallels between the case of the national goalkeeper, who committed suicide twelve years ago, and Kimmich.
The death of Enke was a “decisive event” that always remains in his mind, “even when I think of how last Jogi Löw was beaten up and how he was pilloried, and you can now see that with Jo Kimmich too «, Bierhoff hinted at an at least daring comparison.
No gag, no saying from Müller
Flick refrained from such alleged analogies, the national coach merely said carefully: "We are a bit transparent, but we have a special responsibility in public."
Corona and no end - how tired you are of this topic at the DFB was also noticeable with Thomas Müller.
Not a loose phrase, not a simple gag, a serious miller presented himself, "that's just not funny," said the Bayern professional.
Müller obviously tried to bring the entire excited debate to the ground.
"I don't understand why this is being over-dramatized here, the whole of society is concerned with Corona every day." The fact that, in view of the current situation, a test also has a positive result in a vaccinated player like Süle, "is nothing unusual these days."
But sympathy for his team-mate Kimmich, who is now missing the two internationals, that in turn is not appropriate, so Müller: "The rules didn't just exist since yesterday.
The setting that we experienced yesterday was clear for everyone for a long time. ”What was meant was that whoever is unvaccinated as a contact person for an infected person will have to go into quarantine and miss at least the two upcoming international matches.
Flick found that "it was almost predictable that something like this would also happen at the DFB".
The next international matches after Liechtenstein and Armenia on Sunday are not part of the program until March.
Whether there will be other rules or a different setting by then is completely open.
At least there is enough time for Flick to do what he announced on Wednesday: "To calmly consider what conclusions we will draw from it."
There are still more than four months to March, but if you have learned one thing from the pandemic, it is what Flick said at the end: "This will keep us busy for even longer."
