Euro 2024 hosts Germany hit rock bottom after two more damaging defeats

On June 14 next year, at the Allianz Arena in Munich, the hosts of the summer’s major football event will take to the field utterly familiar with their surroundings and with one another.

But they will do so with a profound sense that something is not right. There will be several Bayern Munich men in Germany’s line-up as they open Euro 2024 and an ex-Bayern coach, Julian Nagelsmann, on the touchline. Yet getting them to play like the serial Bundesliga champions seems a very tall order.

Germany’s 2-0 loss in Vienna to Austria on Tuesday night completed a dreadful year. Twelve months ago today they were being ambushed by Japan in their opening game of a World Cup that turned out as deflating as the 2018 tournament, which they went to as holders.

It’s two group stage exits on the trot now for Germany and the backdraft from tumbling out of Qatar 2022 early has been even more damaging than the aftermath of four years earlier. After Russia 2018, Germany stuck with the coach, Jogi Low. Nagelsmann is the third different manager to have taken the helm in the last three months.

To listen to their captain, Ilkay Gundogan, what’s happened over 2023 has taken them to rock bottom. “It couldn’t get worse,” he said of the second loss in three days, following Turkey’s 3-2 win in Berlin. “Maybe that’s the only positive.”

The only way is up, in other words, for a team whose diet of post-World Cup friendlies, having qualified for the Euros automatically as hosts, leaves them with a record that is Germany’s worst return from a calendar year since 1964. Eleven outings designed specifically to gear up the squad for the most important tournament since they hosted the 2006 World Cup have yielded just three victories, the last one after coming