Sammer responds to Bierhoff: Elite sport demands more than flat hierarchies
Matthias Sammer has launched a sharp counterattack on Oliver Bierhoff in the middle of Germany’s renewed debate over leadership and personality in the national team.
Bierhoff, who ran the DFB setup from 2004 to 2022, had told kicker that the current side lacks experienced leaders and “outstanding personalities with great individual strengths”. For Sammer, that criticism rings hollow.
Speaking on Sky, the 1996 European champion reminded viewers of a very different message once pushed from the very top. “It wasn’t long ago that he was also saying we need flat hierarchies in Germany,” Sammer said.
Sammer made clear he never bought into that idea. He has always argued for a mix of “leaders, team players and individualists” within a squad. Treat them all the same, he warned, and you pay the price later.
“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, Bierhoff cannot simply step aside from the consequences. As the man in charge of the national team structure for nearly two decades, he “must be held accountable for that to some extent”.
Sammer recalled his own early days inside the DFB. “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.”
The 59-year-old did not soften his verdict. Talk of flat hierarchies in top-level football, he said, ranks among “the biggest mistakes” made in the modern game. “It’s a catastrophe.”
“Mega guy” Klopp electrifies Germany’s newcomers
While the past is being dissected on TV, the future is lacing its boots in Herzogenaurach. And inside the DFB camp, one name dominates every sentence: Jürgen Klopp.
The new national coach has been in the job only days, but the impact on Germany’s fresh faces is already obvious.
“You feel like you’d walk through fire for him,” said Freiburg defender Philipp Treu, who called Klopp “a mega guy” at the training base. The phrase stuck — and fits the mood.
On his first international camp, Klopp has thrown the door wide open. Alongside Treu, Bambase Conte, Yannik Engelhardt, Max Rosenfelder, Hennes Behrens and Younes Ebnoutalib are all in the squad preparing, with partner adidas, for Thursday’s Nations League opener away to the Netherlands (8.45pm).
Ebnoutalib summed up what Klopp wants to see. Above all, pride.
“That we represent the German national team with pride,” the Frankfurt player explained before Tuesday afternoon’s session. “That we step up, that even when things aren’t going well, we give everything.”
Ebnoutalib could have gone down a different path and chosen Morocco. The phone call changed everything. “When Klopp calls, you have to go. He is one of the best coaches in the world, there is definitely positive energy.”
Rosenfelder, also of Freiburg, feels the same surge. Klopp brings “a lot of charisma”, the centre-back said. The respect is huge, but the atmosphere is anything but distant.
“Of course you have huge respect, but in conversations he is very nice, very likeable and makes you feel involved.” For now, Rosenfelder has one simple plan for his first days with the DFB side: “take in everything. I’m just really up for it.”
Treu, his club team-mate, has already marked out his target. Germany’s right-back spot is open. He wants it.
“I want to show who I am,” said Treu, who cites Philipp Lahm as his role model. “You can always rely on me.” If the chance comes, he promised to “leave my heart on the pitch and always give it everything.”
High hopes, hard warnings: Sammer on Klopp’s Germany
Sammer, who had just taken aim at Bierhoff’s past choices, struck a very different tone when the subject turned to Klopp. Critical of the old structures, he sees something new taking shape.
“I recognise that he has an absolute plan. You can always discuss his way of organising things, but it follows a plan,” Sammer said on “Sammer & Basile – der Hagedorn-Talk” on Sky.
His hope is clear and urgent: “that this team gives us back an identity that we urgently need”.
After the World Cup debacle, Klopp has stepped in for Julian Nagelsmann. On Tuesday he led his first full training session in Herzogenaurach. On Thursday night in Amsterdam, against the Netherlands, he will walk out for his debut as Germany head coach.
The excitement around him is enormous. Sammer feels it too — and still reaches for the brake.
“He can’t work miracles,” he warned. For Sammer, the key lies in Klopp’s ability to explain the process, not just ride the wave. It is “always about making it understandable too – through his personality and his experience as a coach – that this may also need a bit of time.”
Klopp already looks energised, Sammer noted. “He seems euphoric – already – and that affects the people and the team too.” At some point, though, the noise will die down. “But at some point, euphoria alone won’t get you anywhere.”
The test of what survives beyond that first rush begins in Amsterdam on Thursday night.
