Germany captain İlkay Gündogan unhappy with performance in loss to Turkey

Germany has crumbled to defeat against Turkey in head coach Julian Nagelsmann’s third match in charge of the German men’s national team.

Team captain İlkay Gündogan had this to say about the match: “We started the game very well. Even after taking the lead, in the first 15 to 20 minutes, we had enough chances to decide the game. After that we weren’t determined enough and didn’t move the ball well. The Turks played man-to-man well and we couldn’t find any solutions. We weren’t aggressive enough and their goals came from our mistakes. We were just too passive and weren’t able to put pressure on their build-up play. It feels like we lost the game in the first half.” (via @iMiaSanMia)

Germany played well early on to take the lead, which translated into a comfortable spell in the first half, but to say that enough chances were created to decide the game gives the team more credit than they deserve. Turkey matched and was better than Germany overall, and Gündogan’s comments don’t give enough credit to the opposition.

The issues in Germany conceding goals looked to be from a lack of defensive organization. Because Benjamin Henrichs played more like a center-back than a typical right-back, him tucking in left space on the right side of Germany’s defense for the Turks to attack that Leroy Sané was not able to cover.

While giving up a penalty certainly counts as a mistake from the German defense, the other goals seem to be the result of tactical errors, or positioning mistakes from individual players.

Interested in a more in-depth look at what went wrong for Germany, or do you just want to revel in our misery? Well either way, our podcast has you covered. In our newest episode, we discuss Germany’s humiliating loss to Turkey, and also take a minute to discuss whether Alphonso Davies will stay at Bayern Munich. Listen to it below or on Spotify.

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