Old friends in the Nations League
The DFB team will escape the favorites for the time being after the European Championships
The German national soccer team currently has completely different concerns than the Nations League – and yet the UEFA competition is still being drawn. The DFB team catches a group with good old friends – and escapes the big heavyweights.
Julian Nagelsmann and Rudi Völler were clearly smiling. The German national soccer team only faced one real top opponent for the new Nations League season. In the group phase, national coach Nagelsmann's selection will face the Netherlands, Hungary and Bosnia-Herzegovina from September. That was the result of the draw in Paris. The DFB selection was sorted into Group 3 in the A-League.
Hungary and the Netherlands are old friends: they played against the Hungarians in the Nations League last season (and only got one point in two games). The team was also a group opponent of the German team at the 2021 European Championship – and is waiting for Nagelsmann and Co. again in the group phase of the home European Championship in June. The Netherlands, in turn, won the “German” group in the first edition of the Nations League in 2018 /19.
National coach Nagelsmann and DFB sports director Rudi Völler followed the draw on site at the Maison de la Mutualité – when the new season in the national competition begins in September, both will no longer be in office. Nagelsmann and Völler's contracts end after the home European Championships this summer (June 14th to July 14th).
In the 2024/25 season, a quarter-final will be played for the first time in the Nations League, through which four of the 16 European starting places for the 2026 World Cup will be awarded. The four group winners of the A-League are no longer automatically qualified for the final tournament of the best four nations in the summer. Playoffs will be held together with the group runners-up in March 2025 and will be drawn in November. But even this rule would only have been enough for the national team to advance for the first time in the previous three editions of the tournament: in 2020/21, the DFB selection with Joachim Löw came second, but what will be remembered most is the 6-0 defeat in Spain in November 2020 .
Bitter German balance sheet
In the last 2022/23 season, Germany – under Nagelsmann's predecessor Hansi Flick – only finished third in the group. In the premiere season of 2018/19, at that time still with groups of three, the DFB selection was the last to avoid relegation to the B league only through a later increase. This danger is now increasing again: In the coming season, the third-placed teams in the A-League will have to play in playoffs against the runners-up in the B-League to avoid relegation. So far only the last team has been relegated to the next lower league.
Out of 16 games so far, Germany has only won three with four defeats and nine draws. The best goalscorer is Timo Werner, who moved to Tottenham Hotspur in the winter, with seven goals – overall, the national team conceded 29 more goals than they scored (24).
