Wück: “No excuses for our performance”

The Germany U17s team finished in third place at the UEFA development tournament in Croatia. A 3-2 defeat to Greece and a 3-2 victory over Croatia was followed by a heavy 8-1 thumping against England. Germany U17s head coach Christian Wück spoke to DFB.de about the reasons for the team’s disappointing exit from the tournament, why he still thinks there are lots of positives to take from this and how the team will do going into the future.

DFB: Mr Wück, losing 8-1 to England – you surely cannot have imagined that the tournament would end this way?

Christian Wück: Of course not. But first, I want to congratulate England on their very strong performance from what is an extremely talented squad. If they carry on playing like that, they will definitely win the European Championships next year. There are however a variety of reasons for our defeat on Monday.

DFB: What was your view of it?

Wück: England came here with a very strong team. We were playing with our B team and had our best players from this age group missing. Our performance levels are not so high that we are able to have 40 players all at the same level. But that should not be an excuse for our performance. I said that to the boys at half time as well as in the changing room after the match.

DFB: What exactly is to blame for this?

Wück: You can be the inferior team but you have to put up a fight and try to do everything to stop conceding goals. Sometimes you have to do that in slightly unconventional ways if you are to stop yourself letting in a wave of goals. We completely lacked the required desire for it. We’ve addressed that very clearly and the boys spoke openly about their mistakes. But...

DFB: Go on...

Wück: We still must not forget that these are young 16-year-old kids playing, who will obviously make mistakes from time to time. We also explained that to them in the dressing room. The boys were totally deflated after the defeat, so there was no real point in hammering them even more.

DFB: Alongside the 1-8 defeat to England, your side lost to Greece but also recorded a victory against Croatia. What lessons will you taken from these games?

Wück: Up until the game against England, I was extremely happy with the performance of the team. They were very willing to learn and tried not to repeat the same mistakes from the first game in the following game against Croatia. Against England, we came up against an opponent who outplayed us in all departments. Nevertheless, three or players came into our attention and have been recommended for selection for the A-squad.

DFB: Where do you now go from here?

Wück: We want to once again analyse and assess the whole tournament and of course the England game. In November we have another round of international fixtures. We then complete our training camp in La Manga and play in the Algarve Cup. After this, we will make a decision about what squad to pick for the European Championship qualifiers in March. There is still a little bit of time between now and then to experiment with a few things. As a result we won’t concern ourselves too much with the England game, but we do need to make sure that such a score-line never happens again.