The sun was shining over the Millerntor as the national team completed their final session in Hamburg, and Hansi Flick’s mood matched the weather. The reason: the national coach has all men on board for the afternoon flight to northern Macedonia.
Oliver Hartmann, Karlheinz Wild and Sebastian Wolff report from the national team
Manuel Neuer will also be available again on Monday evening if possible to book his World Cup ticket early. Antonio Rüdiger skipped Sunday’s final training session and trained in the hotel instead – a purely precautionary measure, as Flick explained. “He has played a lot recently and we have only worked a little in the regenerative area anyway. But Toni is deployable.”
The same goes for the captain. On Saturday, the DFB had “borrowed” HSV keeper Daniel Heuer Fernandes for the training session at Volkspark because Neuer was still on break; at Millerntor, he now underwent intensive goalkeeper training. And the whole thing, as Flick emphasises, “without any problems. He’ll be fine. “
“Little things were missing in detail “
Flick once again renewed his September credo during the press conference from the Hamburg “Gastwerk” in the run-up to the trip to Skopje. The northern Macedonians had inflicted the DFB eleven’s only defeat of this qualifying campaign so far at the end of March, still under Joachim Löw, but the focus in match preparation is on their own qualities. “The analysis of the Romania game,” the coach emphasises, “showed that our game was very, very much what we imagined. In the end, little things were missing in the details, but we had enormous mentality, a lot of drive in the game.”
And it is precisely with these virtues that Flick is sure to succeed on Monday. “Of course,” he says, “we analysed the first leg, but I don’t want to talk so much about what we have to do better than in the first leg, it’s about us remembering our qualities. “
Whaling accusations: Flick takes Werner in his stride
As he does so, he once again takes up the cudgels for the much-criticised Timo Werner, as he did late on Friday night immediately after the 2-1 defeat to Romania. “I can’t change what is happening right now, I can only say that he is doing his job very well, that he is finding ways deep.” The fact that the ex-Leipzig player is also once again being pilloried for producing a swallow is definitely going too far for the 56-year-old: “In a run at this pace, a little contact is enough to go down,” he said of the scene with the Romanian Burca. “It’s not fair to talk about a swallow in that scene. “
Werner remains the central fixture in Flick’s offensive. And that should provide the final step towards Qatar. “We’ve always said that we want to qualify as quickly as possible,” stresses Flick, “so we want to win on Monday. “
