Matthias Sammer has never been one to tiptoe around an argument. Faced with Oliver Bierhoff’s recent criticism of a supposedly leaderless Germany squad, the 1996 European champion turned the spotlight straight back on the former DFB manager.
Bierhoff had lamented in an interview with kicker that the national team now lacked experienced leaders and “outstanding personalities with great individual strengths”. For Sammer, hearing that from the man who helped shape the DFB structure for almost two decades was a step too far.
Speaking on Sky, he reminded viewers of a very different Bierhoff line. “It wasn't long ago that he was also saying we need flat hierarchies in Germany,” Sammer said, clearly unimpressed by the change of tune.
Sammer insisted he had always argued for a mix of “leaders, team players and individualists” in a squad. Treat everyone exactly the same, he warned, and you should not be surprised when the dressing room lacks edge.
“If you want to treat them all the same, in the dressing room, on the pitch, then we shouldn't be complaining today or saying we are missing a few characters,” he said. For Sammer, that is not just a philosophical disagreement. It is a question of responsibility.
Bierhoff, he stressed, cannot stand outside the debate. As the man in charge from 2004 to 2022, he “must be held accountable” for the culture that developed. Sammer recalled his own early days at the association. “I came into the association in 2006 and in 2007 I asked myself the question: something isn't right here. Just that, not right or wrong. And then people asked me, why? I say, we're all the same. They're all lovely and nice and that's great, but we're not at a pony farm here. This is elite sport, things get rough at times. It has to kick off in training sometimes, it has to kick off in the dressing room sometimes.”
That image cuts through. No cosy idyll, no carefully flattened structure. In Sammer’s world, top-level football needs friction. It needs confrontation. It needs hierarchy.
The 59-year-old went even further. Talk of flat hierarchies in elite sport, he said, ranks among “the biggest mistakes” ever made. His verdict was blunt: “It's a catastrophe.”
“Mega Guy” Klopp Lights Up the Camp
While Sammer rakes over the past, a very different energy pulses through the DFB camp in Herzogenaurach. Jürgen Klopp has barely started, yet the newcomers are already talking as if they would follow him anywhere.
“You feel like you'd walk through fire for him,” said Freiburg’s Philipp Treu, summing up the mood around the new national coach. For Treu, Klopp “is a mega guy” – the kind of presence young players instantly gravitate towards.
Klopp’s first squad reflects that openness. He has thrown the door wide for fresh faces. Alongside Treu, Bambase Conte, Yannik Engelhardt, Max Rosenfelder, Hennes Behrens and Younes Ebnoutalib are all in camp with partner adidas as Germany prepare for their Nations League opener in the Netherlands on Thursday night.
Ebnoutalib knows exactly what Klopp wants from them. Pride. Commitment. No excuses. The Frankfurt player explained that Klopp expects “that we represent the German national team with pride, that we step up, that even when things aren't going well, we give everything.”
Ebnoutalib could have chosen another path. Morocco were an option for the attacker. But the pull of Klopp proved decisive. “When Klopp calls, you have to go. He is one of the best coaches in the world, there is definitely positive energy,” he said.
Rosenfelder, another Freiburg player, echoed that sense of aura. Klopp brings “a lot of charisma”, the centre-back noted. The respect is huge, of course, but the coach’s way of dealing with players breaks down the distance. In conversations, Rosenfelder said, Klopp is “very nice, very likeable and makes you feel involved.” For now, the defender simply wants to “take in everything. I'm just really up for it.”
Treu is eyeing something very concrete: the open right-back spot. He has a clear role model in Philipp Lahm and a clear message for the new boss. “I want to show who I am,” he said. “You can always rely on me.” If the chance comes, he plans to “leave my heart on the pitch and always give it everything.”
In a squad accused of lacking personality, these are players openly craving responsibility under a coach who thrives on it.
Klopp, Identity and the Limits of Euphoria
Sammer, for all his criticism of the past, sees something powerful in Klopp’s arrival. He believes the new national coach can reshape more than just a starting XI.
“I recognise that he has an absolute plan,” Sammer said on “Sammer & Basile – der Hagedorn-Talk” on Sky. “You can always discuss his way of organising things, but it follows a plan.” That structure, that clarity, feeds into his bigger hope: “that this team gives us back an identity that we urgently need.”
Germany’s recent World Cup disaster still hangs over everything. Klopp steps into the role as the man after Julian Nagelsmann, carrying a reputation built in Dortmund and Liverpool and a nation’s impatience on his shoulders.
On Tuesday, he leads his first full team training session in Herzogenaurach. On Thursday, he walks out in Amsterdam for his debut as Germany head coach, a Nations League clash against the Netherlands under the floodlights at 8.45pm. The stage is big, the opponent familiar, the scrutiny guaranteed.
Sammer, though, draws a line under any saviour fantasies. “He can't work miracles,” he warned. The job, as he sees it, is not to conjure instant transformation but to make the process understandable – to use Klopp’s personality and experience to show that rebuilding “may also need a bit of time.”
Right now, the mood is buoyant. “He seems euphoric – already – and that affects the people and the team too,” Sammer observed. The players feel it. The country feels it. The camp hums with that early surge you only get when something new begins.
But Sammer’s last point hangs in the air like a challenge: “At some point, euphoria alone won't get you anywhere.”
The debate over hierarchy, character and identity will not be settled in a few training sessions or one night in Amsterdam. It will be settled in how this team fights, argues, grows – and whether Klopp’s fire can turn all that noise into a Germany side that finally looks like itself again.
