Germany Tactics Check | Spacing and control in Jürgen Klopp’s first three matches

Germany Tactics Check | Spacing and control in Jürgen Klopp’s first three matches Get German Football News ‘ deep dive into the tactics of Jürgen Klopp’s first three matches as German Bundestrainer has yielded some interesting conclusions. Perhaps the most interesting governing question entering this analysis – precisely how much of Klopp’s Liverpool football he wishes to bring to our beloved Nationalmannschaft – isn’t something that has found a straightforward answer. Plenty of tactical murkiness characterized Klopp’s early tenure, something the Bundestrainer himself admitted would likely be the case. Those of us keen to discern whether Germany are now a 4-3-3, a 4-1-2-3, a 4-2-3-1 team didn’t find our answer. Something a tactics board might prefer to label 3-2-5 even cropped up when it came time to review the tape. Klopp has already used versions of all of the above. The fullbacks have received radically different assignments. The midfield has changed its vertical spacing from one game to the next. Wide attackers have played inverted, held width, switched flanks and joined the striker. This does not necessarily mean that Klopp is still searching for his football. Quite possibly, it means we have been looking for it in the wrong place. The 1-1 draw in Amsterdam gave us something resembling the 4-1-2-3 shape Klopp had used during his best Merseyside years. Subsequent football defied nice, tidy conclusions. That doesn’t mean examining it all hasn’t proved a great deal of fun. If nothing else, Klopp has confirmed that his tactical footballing mind remains as sharp as ever. Germany have already played several nominal formations, but Klopp’s emerging identity may lie not in shape at all—it lies in how players space themselves, how much positional risk they take, and how the structure reacts once possession is lost. All the evidence remains worth documenting properly. Tactical Documentation: Netherlands 1-1 Germany The initial 4-1-2-3 featured some recognizable Klopp fingerprints. Adeyemi and Schade began on their weaker-foot sides and regularly occupied narrower starting positions than conventional touchline wingers. The two speedsters were there to threaten depth, not simply provide width. The fullbacks maintained plenty of license to roam forward, yet remained understandably reticent in the first match. Lineup—Germany (Match One) One can see that the wingers operated inward, pushing the striker back to a shallow false-nine role. The back-four pressed exceedingly high, yet still remained largely vertical and uninvolved with the work of the solo six. The eights, just like the two outside players on the top attacking axis, retained an inward-focused assignment. From these positions, Adeyemi and Schade were expected to attack inward and forward. Havertz could come short. Treu and Brown were supposed to inherit the external lanes as the attack developed. Germany’s first minutes also gave us the first glimpse of the pressing concept. Klopp’s demand for compactness could hardly have been displayed more literally: if the front line pressed high, the defensive line had to follow it. Nmecha’s 32nd-minute opener hardly had anything to do with tactics, so we’ll essentially move on from it. Xavi Hernández’s team increasingly constructed its attacks with a three-man first line. That mattered because Germany’s initial pressure could no longer engage the Dutch build-up as neatly. A spare defender became available. The Netherlands could play around the first German pressure and expose the more consequential weakness behind it. Kimmich was alone. With Kimmich as the solitary six, the Netherlands repeatedly freed players in the half-spaces around him. Kimmich won only one of seven duels and lacked the speed to extinguish every problem once the first German line had been beaten. Nmecha and Amiri were positioned aggressively. Once the Dutch broke the first line, Kimmich was responsible for an enormous central area. The Dutch could access a midfielder around him and then release players such as Cody Gakpo or the advanced Denzel Dumfries. Once that first line was bypassed, Kimmich had multiple decisions to make and insufficient help with which to make them. Step toward the receiver and another space opened behind him. Protect the middle and the Netherlands could work outside toward Gakpo or Dumfries. The problem therefore wasn’t merely one poor individual performance from the captain. It was a spacing problem. Klopp changed it at halftime. Amiri operated noticeably deeper. Germany became less vertically stretched through midfield and, without the ball, frequently settled into a 4-5-1. At times Schade dropped so deeply that the shape could resemble a 5-4-1. Lineup—Germany (46th minute) The assignment had changed. Germany were no longer primarily trying to keep their eights high enough to attack immediately. Amiri now helped Kimmich close the space the Dutch had exploited. The price was obvious. Germany struggled to get out. The Netherlands ultimately amassed 22 shots, 12 corners and an xG of 3.18. The eventual equalizer was more than deserved. Germany had succeeded in making the midfield safer only by becoming considerably less threatening themselves. Tactical Documentation: Germany 0-1 Greece The second match posed almost the opposite tactical question. Greece were not particularly interested in playing through Germany. They were interested in preventing Germany from playing through them. Klopp later called the deep block the hardest problem in football and admitted that his team plainly did not yet have the solutions ingrained as part of their muscle memory. Joshua Kimmich complained of insufficient movement and creativity. Alexander Nübel supplied the evening’s most succinct review: Germany had plenty of possession “in zones where we don’t need it.”  Greece defended higher phases in a narrow 4-4-2 before sinking into a 5-3-2 near their penalty area. Konstantinos Karetsas could drop into the defensive line, meaning the deepest Greek block sometimes became a 6-2-2. Germany responded with a recognizably modern positional structure. It just didn’t function very well. Klopp’s team built in either a 2-3-5 or 3-2-5. Brown advanced high on the left. Vagnoman remained considerably deeper on the right. Adeyemi held the right-side width. Schade moved inward and became almost a second striker alongside Ebnoutalib. Conté drifted between positions. Nmecha sought pockets between the lines. Kimmich dropped toward the first build-up line. Lineup—Germany (Match Two) This graphic explains much of the match on its own. Germany had plenty of positional occupation. They simply didn’t occupy enough of the positions that made Greece uncomfortable. Against a defense sometimes containing six players in its last line, Germany should at least have threatened runs beyond that line in order to push it deeper and enlarge the space immediately in front. Spatially, it came as no surprise to witness Vagnoman struggle with this “large patch” assignment. Instead, players vacated advanced spaces in order to participate in possession. Kimmich was the most obvious case. He dropped toward the center-backs against an opponent applying almost no meaningful pressure there. Germany thereby acquired another player to circulate the ball through an area Greece had voluntarily surrendered. The trade-off was one fewer player in the spaces Greece actually cared about. Almost every German needed multiple touches. Even when the first Greek line had been displaced, the next pass took too long. Greece simply moved back into shape. The narrowness of their 4-4-2 occasionally left the far-side fullback or half-space available, but the switches arrived too late or not at all. Germany’s attacks frequently ended in poorly prepared longer balls toward Ebnoutalib, who often floundered in pursuit of them. Klopp’s distribution of roles on the right invited particular criticism. Adeyemi held the width. Vagnoman remained deeper and occasionally tucked toward the back line. Germany had effectively assigned the winger the static wide role and asked the powerful fullback to secure the structure underneath him. Adeyemi eventually began roaming away from the right. Some of Germany’s best attacks followed. The broader lesson was not necessarily that the formation was wrong. The spacing and player profiles within it were. To his immense credit, Klopp employed useful halftime adjustments, the most meaningful of which was Kimmich’s. After the break, the skipper stopped dropping back so deeply. For about 15 minutes, the attack immediately became more compelling once Kimmich operated higher. Lineup—Germany (46th minute) From this position, Kimmich could receive closer to the Greek midfield. Nmecha and Conté had less incentive to retreat all the way toward the center-backs. Germany suddenly generated higher regains and entries around the penalty area. The improvements lasted almost precisely a quarter-of-an-hour. When the collective movement slowed again, Klopp turned to personnel. Wirtz replaced Conté. Burkardt replaced Schade and joined Ebnoutalib centrally. Lineup—Germany (66th minute) The player movements were straightforward. Burkardt became a genuine second striker. Wirtz replaced Conté as the player tasked with connecting midfield and attack. Brown therefore carried virtually all of the natural width on the left. It represented Klopp’s most aggressive personnel adjustment of the opening two matches. It also demonstrated that additional attackers do not automatically solve an occupation problem. Germany still struggled to move Greece. And, when the decisive turnover eventually came, Greece punished the gaps behind Germany’s possession structure. The 0-1 represented something more significant than simply a poor attacking performance. Germany took too few useful risks with the ball and were still insufficiently protected once they lost it. Tactical Documentation: Germany 2-0 Serbia Klopp changed all eleven starters ahead of his first win. Germany retained 74 percent possession—almost exactly the same game state as the Greece match. Against Greece, 76 percent possession had produced 16 shots and 1.27 xG. Against Serbia, Germany generated 32 attempts and 3.81 xG while allowing a single Serbian shot and 0.01 xG. Germany continually reached the penalty area and registered 16 first-half efforts alone. The greatest structural difference lay in midfield. Aleksandar Pavlovic operated as the single six. He amassed 148 touches and worked as Germany’s organizer in possession. Tom Bischof worked ahead of him. Florian Wirtz worked ahead of Bischof. We witnessed the first clear manifestation of a definitively “Klopp-organized” midfield. Germany occupied the half-spaces well, played forward, remained close together after errors, and could therefore recover the ball quickly. Lineup—Germany (Match Three) The movement from these positions constituted almost the precise opposite of the Greece performance. Pavlovic did not require Bischof to stand next to him in order to help circulate the ball. Bischof could therefore work forward while Wirtz remained ahead. Woltemade turned in a solid performance both tying up the Serbian defensive line and working some deeper drops. Unfortunately, the Newcastle forward couldn’t reward himself with a goal. Bischof proved especially intelligent in occupying the half-spaces. The relationship between Pavlovic and Bischof gave Germany both stability and creativity. Bischof was constantly active and mobile rather than simply serving as Pavlovic’s partner. The opener synthesized the idea. Pavlovic found Wirtz. Wirtz received in the area Germany had so conspicuously failed to occupy against Greece. Wirtz hit the post. Bischof finished the rebound. Woltemade’s own finishing was poor, but his performance still had tactical value. He was involved in combinations, supplied an excellent short pass for Gnabry’s one-on-one and repeatedly gave Serbia’s center-backs a central reference to defend. Again, spacing produced movement as opposed to pure stagnation. This time, Maximilian Mittelstädt and Philipp Treu took turns pressing forward while the counterpart dropped back in perfect synch. Treu worked higher more often in the opening 45 minutes. Much of what Treu did had very little to do with conventional right-back work . He operated enormously high. That left his flank exposed and nearly cost Germany a goal when Filip Kostic attacked the abandoned space after 32 minutes. Offensively, the benefits were equally obvious. This applied to the second half as well, with Mittelstädt roaming forward more often than his fullback partner. From those positions, the bargain becomes clear. One fullback could attack almost as an additional winger. Gnabry could move inward. Bischof and Wirtz could remain close enough to attack second balls and immediate turnovers. Pavlovic could protect underneath. Thiaw could even shift toward the vacated right defensive channel. If Germany lost the ball, the nearest players were expected to immediately collapse around the loss before Serbia could find Kostic. Once that collective mechanism worked, the unconventional fullback position ceased to look reckless. In general, the way the entire team swarmed around just about every loose ball remained impressive and engaging to us biased observers. As Klopp himself observed after the match, winning as many second and third balls as possible renders most tactical critiques moot. Germany created particularly good chances after quick ball recoveries. Gnabry, Scherhant and Wirtz all aggressively initiated pressure. The pace of Germany’s work both forward and backward was identified as the benchmark for Klopp’s future team. The relationship between attacking football and counterpressing is fundamental here. Against Greece, Germany’s slow possession and poorly prepared longer passes frequently left the team incapable of counterpressing after a loss. Against Serbia, Germany’s attacking spacing put enough players close to useful areas that they could immediately attack the ball again. To put it glibly and simply, better attacking spacing produced better defending. Gnabry left at halftime for reasons related to overall workload management . Said El Mala entered. Rather than placing El Mala directly on Gnabry’s right side, Klopp moved Scherhant across and installed El Mala on the left. Scherhant, who had faded after a lively start, became more involved again after switching sides. The specific spatial assignments also appeared to change for almost every player. Lineup—Germany (46th minute) El Mala could now attack inward from his natural left side. Scherhant worked from the opposite flank and again became involved around the penalty area. Wirtz remained the central reference. The striking part was how little the collective structure suffered. Later on, Burkardt came on for Woltemade, Conté for Scherhant, Mika Baur for Bischof and Vitaly Janelt for Pavlovic. The match was largely finished by then, so there is little value in inventing another grand tactical interpretation. One nevertheless notes that even the substitutes entered without the kind of structural collapse that has sometimes accompanied German personnel in recent years. That’s certainly an encouraging development moving forward. Asked why Wirtz functioned so well alongside Pavlovic and Bischof, Klopp rejected the idea that one particular combination represented the solution. Germany, he said, must be capable of playing “ a certain type of football” in different constellations. The lineup cannot remain constant. The football has to. Therein lies the real point of the 44-player experiment. Is Klopp bringing Premier League football to Germany? Not exactly. Calling this an importation of “Premier League tactics” would probably get the history backwards. Klopp’s pressing principles were forged in Germany. Gegenpressing travelled with him to England. So did the preference for vertical football, compactness and emotional aggression without the ball. Yet the coach who has returned to Germany is not the same coach who left Borussia Dortmund in 2015. Nine years at Liverpool nevertheless changed the way Klopp sought to manage matches. The clearest early evidence with the national team is not some fashionable build-up formation or a fullback appearing in an unusual square on a tactics board. It is the relationship between risk and control. Klopp’s German internationals are already being encouraged to occupy aggressive positions. The wingers can move inside. The fullbacks can move beyond them. An eight can attack the box. The six can become the sole organizer. The defensive line can stand near halfway. Those decisions create vulnerabilities by definition. Klopp’s apparent solution is to keep the team so coordinated and so ferocious immediately after losing possession that the opposition cannot exploit them. That is a far more Liverpool-era proposition than merely writing “4-3-3” next to the German lineup. And the first three matches have supplied three remarkably clean demonstrations of what happens when different pieces of the proposition are missing. The first match featured  risk without sufficient control, while the second contained control without meaningful risk . The right balance was finally struck in München on Thursday evening. Pavlovic organized beneath the play. Bischof worked on another vertical level. Wirtz remained inside the opponent. Woltemade occupied the deepest defenders. Treu took extraordinary attacking liberties. The spacing around those liberties then enabled Germany to immediately recover lost balls. Klopp called that performance the baseline. It probably should be. Not because Pavlovic must now replace Kimmich. Not because Bischof has permanently won a starting position or because Treu must always play like a right winger wearing a fullback’s number. The personnel are supposed to change. The relationships between them are not. That may ultimately be the most important Liverpool lesson Klopp brings back home. The mature version of his football was never about eleven names standing in eleven prescribed places. It was about giving players permission to leave those places because the rest of the team understood what their movement demanded in return. Germany have managed to deliver the complete package for one match. One can hardly wait to see what they do with their second chance against Greece. Four days after providing the clearest example of how Klopp’s new Germany can fail, the Greeks will get the first opportunity to test whether the Serbia performance represented genuine learning or merely one very pleasant evening in Munich. The formation will be worth noting. The spacing will tell us much more. GGFN  |  Peter Weis