Julian Nagelsmann’s critique after narrow Germany win over Luxembourg: “Too many back passes and too slow.” | OneFootball

Germany managed to defeat Luxembourg 2-0 in a crucial World Cup qualifier on Friday evening. Two goals scored in the second half by Newcastle striker Nick Woltemade helped pad the scoreline. German national team head coach Julian Nagelsmann nevertheless had to answer for an extremely weak first half in which the DFB-XI managed almost nothing offensively.

“I would be interested to know how many balls we played back today and how many we played forward,” Nagelsmann noted when speaking to RTL afterwards. “I think we had one deep run from Serge [Gnabry] and one chip ball from Leon [Goretzka] in the first half. Apart from that, we played one too many back passes and were too slow.

“We also had three or four situations in the second half where we had the ball in the opponent’s half and played it to Oli [keeper Oliver Baumann] from 70 meters,” Nagelsmann continued. “These three points were much more difficult than they needed to be. We have to play better than we did today.“

GGFN | Peter Weis