Former BVB coach Bert van Marwijk doesn’t think the German national team is very strong at the moment. Nevertheless, he believes the DFB team will have a successful European Championship.

Former BVB coach Bert van Marwijk believes that the German national team’s poor performance in the past three tournaments is a normal development in soccer. “The national team is always dependent on generations. Sometimes there is no good striker or goalkeeper, then suddenly you have two or three good ones at once. However, I don’t think Germany has the best generation at the moment,” the 71-year-old told Funke Mediengruppe on the occasion of the international match between Germany and the Netherlands.

Read the full interview with Bert von Marwijk here

The German Football Association (DFB) team failed to reach the group stage at the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. At the European Championships three years ago, they lost to England in the round of 16.

According to van Marwijk, who played in the Bundesliga for Borussia Dortmund (2004 to 2006) and Hamburger SV (2013 to 2014), you have to “admit that you don’t have the very best team. Then it’s about analyzing and finding a way of playing that suits the coach and players. And very importantly: sticking to the path we’ve taken”. Whether you then lose two or three games is irrelevant. “The only problem is that the public and media find it difficult to accept this. It’s no different in Germany than in the Netherlands,” says van Marwijk.

Nevertheless, van Marwijk believes that the German team will have a successful European Championship. “It’s all about details and always a bit about luck. It could well be that Toni Kroos or Manuel Neuer are the last pieces of the puzzle in this process to achieve success again,” said van Marwijk, who led the Netherlands to the World Cup final in South Africa in 2010. Here the Elftal lost 1:0 to Spain. The association parted ways with van Marwijk after the preliminary round exit at the 2012 European Championship in Poland and Ukraine.