These are bad times for German icons. First Volkswagen choked on its dodgy diesels, now the Germans have to deal with the Irish humiliation of their “bland” world champions.
In a headline that needs no translation, the Bild tabloid summarised Thursday night’s runaround as: “Das dumme Ding von Dublin”. And that in front of a record 11 million television audience.
“We’re still not 100 per cent there,” admitted Bild in a triumph of understatement.
The influential Spiegel Online had one word for the sloppy German side:
Pomadig - pomade. As in: all hair products, no killer instinct.
“Pomadig means passionless, combined with a shot of arrogance,” it added. “It’s a combination with which you can lose a match against these wild, fighting, rocketing Irish.”
Spiegel Online agreed wholeheartedly with Joachim Löw’s assessment: “That was the most unnecessary defeat in years.”
Football specialists Kicker had little sympathy for their German side, noting coldly how many chances to score they gave away.
“Against the Irish side’s clever defending and self-sacrificing battling there were only a few short phases where the world champions developed joy in the game and assertiveness.”
The Frankfurter Allgemeine daily described the post-match scene as one of green-tinted humiliation.
As Depeche Mode’s “I just can’t get enough” blared from the speakers, matching the mood of the home crowd, the newspaper described “a few men in white stole from the pitch from whom you couldn’t claim the same”.
“It’s a long time since we’ve experienced an evening of football in which so much went wrong,” it concluded. “Schweinsteiger injured before the game, Götze lost after half an hour and, of course, a result that, beforehand, would have been seen less as an outside chance than a (bad) joke”.
The Süddeutsche was equally merciless saying the Landsdowne Road massacre “showed painfully what this team sometimes loses: the spirit to use their talents for what matters”.
Even the national side wise-guy Thomas Müller was short of wit after a match that had turned into the “Dublin Dampener” - a rude awakening, Irish-style.
“We don’t have to put ourselves under extreme pressure. We know we can do this,” he said.
But after the Landsdowne Road lashing - the Germans couldn’t get used to ‘Aviva’ - it’s a more humbled national side that faces Georgia on Sunday.
Another Dublin-style disaster is out of the question, but with Götze still out and Schweinsteiger uncertain, Germany is nervous ahead of the trip to the Leipzig last chance saloon.
