With maximum points and 7 goals from their opening 2 games, Germany have moved from Euro 2024 outsiders to probable favourites. But rather than this just being a simple case of never writing them off, Julian Nagelsmann has got his team playing a staggeringly effective brand of football that's getting the most out of a talented side. From the clever use of Toni Kroos, to the next evolution of Kai Havertz, Adam Clery explains how they've done it.
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00:00GUTEN MORGEN or NACHT or whenever you're watching this, ich heißen Adam Cleary aus 442, see
00:09that was pretty good, and we are here today to finally, finally talk about Germany.
00:14Now full disclosure here, mein freunds, we were going to do a video about how good Germany
00:19were after the Scotland game, but I mentioned this to a Scotland pal of mine, and their
00:23exact words were, it was only us, so we thought we'd at least wait until they did in Hungary.
00:28And of course, do in Hungary they have, and they've done it with precisely the same eleven
00:32they did in Scotland with, so it is now time to give Germany whatever the German word for
00:39flowers is.
00:43Right then, so Nagelsmann went with an unchanged team, it was Blum by the way, I went and looked
00:47that up, and it was this same eleven that started against Scotland, and I don't think
00:51he's going to make many changes to that throughout this tournament.
00:54And that's because fundamentally it gives them an incredible amount of balance from
00:58back to front, you've got youth, you've got experience, you've got direct players, you've
01:02got neat and tidy players, and it's working, so far, brilliantly.
01:06So we've got them set up in a 4-2-3-1 shape here, but they've played two games in the
01:09tournament now, you'll have seen them, they are never usually in this shape, especially
01:14when they're not on the ball, there are a number of rotations that make this sing.
01:18So primarily, one of the main concerns people had about this German side going in was that
01:22both Musiala and Wurz, they like to play too much in the centre, they could end up crowding
01:28the whole situation when Germany are on the attack, but that's been fine so far, they're
01:32both getting in that central area, so they're leaving a lot of space here.
01:36And of course, unlike club football, which is now apparently just full of nerds, they
01:39have two proper full-backs in Kimmich, and the lad whose name I always mispronounce,
01:44and they are the ones providing all of the width down the flanks.
01:48And then from there, the two centre-backs split to cover all the space, Toni Kroos drops
01:52onto the same line as them, more on him in a second, and Robert Andrick here might currently
01:57be the most under-appreciated player at this entire tournament.
02:00And we're not going to get into him too much during all of this, but you can just see here
02:04by using your human eyes, Germany are often committing up to six players in attack here,
02:09this is Ilkay Gundogan, they've got Kroos doing the playmaking at the back with the
02:13two centre-backs, and because Manuel Neuer's not doing his occasional trick of playing
02:17on the left wing for some reason, he's got all of this.
02:20You see this, this space between the attack and the defence, this should be a catastrophic
02:25problem with the German system, but it isn't, because of Robert Andrick.
02:29But the thing is, this isn't a massive surprise, like Nagelsmann hasn't turned up at this tournament
02:34with this crazy system nobody's seen before, a lot of the build-up games had Germany playing
02:39pretty much exactly the same way, and yet still, people had written them off for this
02:43tournament, so why suddenly are they being talked about as potential winners?
02:48Well, one of the reasons is because in the two games we have seen so far, nobody has
02:51had an answer to what is going on in this back three.
02:55Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed I put Tony Kroos here, but that's not actually
02:59where he's playing, we always see centre midfielders, they drop back in between the central defenders,
03:04they do it in the middle because it gives them the biggest sort of view of the pitch,
03:08but that's not what Tony Kroos has been doing, he in fact has been dropping out to the left
03:14central-back.
03:15Central-back?
03:16Centre-back.
03:17Yeah, so Tarr and Rudiger, they don't sort of split necessarily, they just move across,
03:20leaving this part of the pitch free for him here, and that's quite innovative because
03:25it stops teams that like to press you from really pressing you.
03:29Look, I'll just show you what I mean by that, right, let's take this little man here and
03:32pop him as a lone centre-forward in this system, now imagine this player here is some ball-playing
03:38central midfielder who's dropped back to get in possession, now you press him, you put
03:42him under pressure, all he can do really is either beat you, risky, because you might
03:46get in score, or go to the two centre-backs, who obviously are not going to be as good
03:51on the ball as he is.
03:52But let's say instead you put your ball-player right here, it gives a whole different set
03:56of problems to our lone centre-forward, because if he does press you, then yes, you can go
04:00back to the central defender who probably doesn't want it, but you can still play up
04:04the pitch, they're still passing angles directly in front of you, and if he curls his run for
04:08one reason or another, that doesn't really help.
04:10But also, if you do manage to go around him and open up that space, you've not only got
04:15the whole pitch in front of you, but it's much less risky, because if you give that
04:18away, well he's all the way out here.
04:20And we've seen this plenty already in both the Scotland and the Hungary game, teams just
04:24don't really want to be going out in that space to press one player, so they haven't
04:29really known what to do with Tony Kroos, and as a result, he's spending a lot of time on
04:35the ball.
04:36Now this is his pass-map from that Hungary game, and you can see obviously he gets into
04:39the central area when they've got the ball, when Hungary are defending deep, he likes
04:42to get into this area and make things happen, but just look at the concentration of passes
04:47in this sort of left centre-back area.
04:50Like Germany have already scored seven goals in this tournament, and so many of them have
04:54involved a contribution in some capacity from Tony Kroos in this position.
04:59Like in the build-up to the Hungary game, right before that killer pass splits those
05:03two lines, look who it is, and look how much space he's found himself in, in this part
05:09of the pitch.
05:10This is the real key to what Germany have been doing at this tournament, it's not that
05:12just one player is getting on the ball, it's what's happening ahead of him when he's got
05:17this space.
05:18Now if we just go back to sort of that original 4-2-3-1 thing, right, I'm going to overlay
05:22Germany's average positions from the Scotland game on this.
05:27One of the main things you're going to notice here is how advanced the full-backs are, like
05:30we were saying before, they're the two that are providing all the width, but the four
05:34main attacking players, Havertz, Gundogan, Wirtz and Musiala, they're all pretty much
05:39right on top of each other in this graph.
05:41Now okay, maybe that's got something to do with the fact Scotland played the majority
05:45of the match with only 10 men, it ends up just being a bit of a mess, not a great representation
05:48of how they normally play, okay?
05:50Well, this is the exact same chart from the Hungary game, and you'll see the exact same
05:55thing again, like the width is coming from Kimmich and Mittelstadt, so you've got it
05:59in the end, but you could even throw a smaller towel over the four attacking players here.
06:04On this average graph, they're coming out as more or less in the exact same position.
06:08And to understand that, we must literally only have to understand what an average is.
06:14This graph isn't showing that they're playing in exactly the same position, that they're
06:17all constantly on top of each other, it's that they're moving around so much from left
06:21to right, from front to back, that when you average that out across 90 minutes, it just
06:25kind of comes out in the middle.
06:26All right, if that still doesn't make sense, then just think about it this way, right?
06:29This is Jamal Musiala's heat map from the Hungary game, and you can see that while his
06:34favoured position is on the left-hand side, slightly in sort of the half space, because
06:38he's not holding the width, we knew that already, you'll see that there are contributions, touches,
06:43passes, little things here and there, across the entire remaining width of the pitch.
06:47He's got the freedom to go pretty much anywhere he wants.
06:50Likewise, Florian Wirtz, you can see he does loads of his work in that right-hand channel,
06:54in that right-hand half space, where he wants to be, but also, he is free to come all the
06:59way across to the left-hand side, to go deeper, to go long, to go pretty much anywhere in
07:03the final third.
07:04So, if you put point A, which is that Tony Cruz has found a new sort of dimension of
07:09freedom by playing in this left-centre-back role, and combine that with point 2, or B,
07:13I can't remember what I originally said, that the forward players have near-total freedom
07:17to go wherever they want, what does that give you?
07:21Well, meine guten friends, it gives you a team whose movement has been an absolute nightmare
07:27for all of their opponents to try and deal with.
07:31Scotland completely dropped Brown Trow at the very sight of it, and even Hungary, who
07:36put up a good fight, who had far more to offer going the other way, could not live with it.
07:41Right, sorry, we lost all the footage for the end of this video for some reason, so
07:46here I am back on a Saturday, tiny violin to re-record it, but just wanted to explain
07:51that in case you wondered why my clothes suddenly changed, and I developed this sick fade.
07:54But right, yes, I think what my point was, was a few seconds later in this sequence during
07:59the Hungary game, Germany have successfully recycled it, they've moved it from left to
08:02right, they have pulled the defenders every single which way, and Gundogan, as a result,
08:07is able to pop up in this improbable amount of space.
08:10There's running from the left-back, that takes one of the defenders away, the other attackers
08:14drop off so the defenders aren't sure whether they should stay or they should go, there's
08:17an incisive pass from Kroos, and the whole point I was making two days ago bears fruit.
08:23But while this is good, and a useful example of what I'm talking about, you will never
08:26see a better example of this whole thing working in perfect orchestral harmony than
08:32in the second goal during the Scotland game.
08:34Now if you only saw the highlights from that game, you probably missed this, because it
08:37was in open play, in the build-up to the goal, actually quite a while before it happened.
08:42Tony Kroos gets on the ball, and Scotland, as they were afraid to do the whole match,
08:46do not go out to press him, and he finds himself with a little bit of time, and a little bit
08:51of space.
08:52Now step one here, Kai Havert, who's playing as the centre-forward, shows really short
08:56for Tony Kroos, he offers him a ball, into feet.
08:59Now very sensibly, the Scottish defender does what you or I would do in that situation,
09:03you can't just let Kai Havert go, so he follows him into that space, creating this hole here.
09:09Now step two, the space having opened up, Moussi al-Apil's off his defender, breaks
09:13into it, and if Tony Kroos spots this, or fancies playing that pass, they're already
09:18in.
09:19And this right here is why I think teams should be so afraid of Germany, because they mess
09:23this up.
09:24If Moussi doesn't spot the pass, the opportunity goes a-begging, but the system keeps on working.
09:30That run that Moussi Ali made wasn't taken advantage of, but the space his run created
09:36then gives an opportunity to somebody else.
09:38Two separate players then spot the opportunity, crash into the space that is now available,
09:43and because there's so much movement going on, and Scotland can't pass over or organise
09:48or reset themselves, the players make individual decisions to either go with or stay, and it
09:53becomes bedlam.
09:54Now it's a great bit of individual skill to turn them on and make the opportunity happen,
10:00but that nice, straight, set Scottish defensive line, which you would not normally be able
10:04to play through, now is at like a 90 degree angle.
10:10Now it's still not a gimme from this position, it's going to take a great pass to create
10:13the chance, but this is the German national side, they have no shortage of players who
10:19can play that great pass.
10:21And this is the thing about international football, right, none of this is particularly
10:23groundbreaking or mind-blowing, like yes, they've got a player who's great on the ball
10:27who moves into a slightly unusual position, and they've got this array of attacking talent
10:32who can interchange and link up and go wide and come central and do lots of nice things
10:36with their movement, but it's not overly complex.
10:39If this was club football, this would get figured out relatively quickly, but what makes
10:43it so good at international level is just that, it's a relatively simple concept that
10:49gets the best out of a number of good players, and thus far, looks to be effective.
10:54And that's the thing about these tournaments, it's usually the team with that really simple
11:00but effective idea that goes all the way in the tournament, that, whisper it, wins it.
11:07But still, we're not getting carried away here, we should urge a note of caution, like
11:10even by the admission of Scottish fans, that first game was only against Scotland, and
11:15in a hungry game, it was a very professional performance, but they still did look occasionally
11:20vulnerable on the transition, which is what a lot of people thought their Achilles heel
11:23was going to be, going into the thing.
11:25Now that's where a lot of teams thought they might be able to get some joy against Germany,
11:29because when Musiala and Wurz come inside, it gets very congested, they commit a lot
11:33of players forward, and it leaves them with only one person in the centre holding this
11:38whole thing together.
11:40And because Musiala and Wurz are dribblers of the ball, they like to run into traffic,
11:44you can turn that over, and when you do, you've done it in exactly the kind of spaces
11:48where you're going to want to attack them.
11:50But then again, if my Grandmutter had wheels, she would have been a far-heart, so it's kind
11:55of a non-point at this stage.
11:57But then, counterpoint to my own counterpoint, for all there is, an apparent weakness in
12:01this system, Germany appear to be one of the only teams at the tournament so far who really
12:06have a system, like you saw all the problems England have had, getting the right personnel
12:10and getting the right thing going, Portugal look fairly static and not really sure what
12:15to do with Ronaldo, Italy are just Italy all over again, but Germany really feel like they
12:21all know what they're doing, and they all know it's going to work.
12:24Before I go, one small point on Kai Havert here, because I do think he deserves a special
12:29mention in amongst all of this.
12:30The kind of one question mark hanging over this XI going into the tournament was whether
12:34you were going to have sort of the not-a-striker-pretending-to-be-a-striker Kai Havert, or the striker who absolutely
12:40loves to be a striker, fulcrum, but you've seen in two games already, Havert is doing
12:46it all.
12:47And we'll just look at his combined heatmap from the tournament so far, and yeah, he is
12:50dropping off, he's going wide, he's getting into the number 10 role, he's creating those
12:54important pockets of space for his teammates to flourish, but also, look in the box, bada-boom,
13:00that's a real striker in the room.
13:01Anyway, I've got no idea how this video will perform on a German YouTube audience, so if
13:06you are from the land of socks and sandals, please do give it a little bit of love, let
13:10us know in the comments, in whatever language you feel like, how you feel about Germany's
13:13chances at the tournament so far, have you been impressed by them, is this just sort
13:16of the level they're playing against?
13:18Do tougher tests await?
13:19We would dearly, honestly, truly like to hear every word of it.
13:23And if I'm at least half right and Germany are going to go do something in this tournament,
13:26this won't be the last time we're talking about them, so please do consider subscribing
13:29to us here on YouTube, if we do get a whole raft of German subs, we'll probably do some
13:34more Germany videos, so you can help us build that audience, which is a very nice thing
13:38for you to do.
13:39Thanks.
13:40And finally, if you just want to go and tell me how bad my pronunciations of all those
13:43German words were, I'm available on social media for you, it's any website you choose
13:47at the following address, and I also like to hear from people there, because, I don't
13:53know if you've figured this out from watching any videos before, but I am an only child,
13:57if you don't give me attention, I will die.
13:59442 Socials are in the corner of the video, and just wait there one second, the latest
14:03issue of the magazine, the Euros Special Edition, ta-da, is on sale now from all good retailers
14:10although I'm told, not in Germany, but you can download it on Das iPad.
14:16Until next time though, I have been Adam Cleary, this is 442, and Auf Wiedersehen, my friends,
14:23I'm 90% sure that means goodbye, it was on an old TV show.
14:26Laters!