"Strung along & false promises" – DFB employee critical of Nagelsmann's dealings with squad | OneFootball

The postmortem into Germany's 2026 World Cup nightmare continues, with rumours emanating out of the national team's camp.

A report in Der Spiegel on Germany's shock early exit in the USA sees Julian Nagelsmann receiving criticism from his former players:

“National team players reported, that when asked, that they sometimes contacted Nagelsmann on their own initiative. 

"They feel he had strung them along, ignored them, or made false promises. Quite a few missed the contact between tournaments.”

The background to this is that Nagelsmann ultimately had difficulty "turning down professionals or delivering bad news." 

This was the case, for example, with goalkeeper Oliver Baumann, who reportedly learned of Manuel Neuer's comeback in a live interview.

Other, unnamed insiders told Der Spiegel about "one-man shows" within the team, and also that there were “too many egomaniacs.”

"They're all nice guys. But they're constantly being pulled in different directions – documentaries, collections, social media, all of that," a DFB employee is quoted as saying.