Didi Hamann critical of Hansi Flick as Germany fall to…

Didi Hamann critical of Hansi Flick as Germany fall to shock defeat against Japan

Didi Hamann was critical of Germany manager Hansi Flick's squad selections after his side fell to a shock 2-1 defeat against Japan in their World Cup opener.

Germany opened the scoring in the first half of the game thanks to an Ilkay Gundogan penalty in the 33rd minute.

And it looked as though they would only add to their lead as the game wore on, similar to Argentina after Lionel Messi's first half penalty gave them the advantage in the first half on Tuesday.

But on that occasion, their opponents Saudi Arabia came roaring back with two second half goals - and lightning struck twice in that regard as Japan dusted themselves off and emulated that feat to produce another huge World Cup shock.

Former Liverpool attacker Takumi Minamino was sprung from the bench after 74 minutes and one minute later, his cross-cum-shot was parried by Nauel Neuer into the path of the onrushing Ritsu Doan and the Freiburg man tucked it away to level the game.

Just eight minutes later, Japan were in dreamland as they scored again.

All it took was a long ball over the top to set Takuma Asano free before he darted into the box from the right wing and blasted a rasping effort into the roof of the net, catching Neuer out at his near post.

Japan defended stoutly for the remainder of the game and held out to win and put a real question mark over Germany's World Cup hopes.

With Costa Rica and Spain to come, Flick's side must do their utmost to gather maximum points or else risk exiting the World Cup at the group stages for the second tournament in a row.

RTÉ's Didi Hamann tore into Germany after the game and admitted he wasn't overly surprised by the result.

He said: "I didn't fancy this Germany team before the start of the tournament, and obviously there is Spain to come now, if you don't beat them it's probably out of your hands in the third game.

"I'm not saying one player makes the difference, but the fact that he didn't take [Mats] Hummels, he took [Armel] Bella-Kotchap - who's a very good young player - he took a player from Leipzig, Klostermann, who has been injured for four months, and it just didn't make sense to me."

Hamann also suggested that Flick was perhaps suffering from selecting a less vocal squad for the tournament in Qatar.

He continued: "It looked to me that he wants a quiet team, but a quiet team won't win you anything.

"It showed today, when questions were asked, they didn't know what to do and there were not enough players to take responsibilities and make decisions.

"As soon as Japan started to play after 55-60 minutes, you saw how fragile they [Germany] are at the back.

"No confidence, they didn't look a team to me."

And the German native concluded that the result was somewhat surprising but not a huge shock.

"A surprise? Yes.

"A big surprise - I would say no."

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