It was a “winter nightmare” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), an “enormous embarrassment” (Bild), a “new low point” that revealed the four-times world champions to have shrunken into a “football dwarf” (Spiegel). The morning after the Nationalmannschaft crashed out of the World Cup at the group stage for the second tournament in a row, German front pages made for blunt reading.
On paper, Germany’s exit was a marginal affair. A 20-minute loss of shape and focus in the opener against Japan, leading to two goals conceded within eight minutes. A ball that had stayed on the pitch by millimetres before Japan scored their winner in a 2-1 win against Spain that rendered Germany’s result against Costa Rica meaningless. If Dani Olmo had equalised for Spain in the dying minutes of the parallel game, Germany would have gone through.
