How Germany Engineered a Soccer Machine – Wall Street Journal

Paris

When the European Championship kicks off here on Friday, it will bring together 24 teams for the first time. There will be traditional powers such as Spain and France and Euro first-timers, such as Iceland and Albania.

Over 30 days and an unprecedented 51 matches, this expanded crowd of teams from the world’s deepest soccer region will square off in what may be the most unpredictable tournament in the international game.

But despite the wealth of talent on show and the tournament’s newfangled format, one thing about Euro 2016 is all but guaranteed to stay the same. You can grab your bracket and push Germany straight into the final four. Write it in ink.

For the past decade, Die Mannschaft has been the surest thing in international soccer. This team has made the semifinals of every major tournament since the 2006 World Cup, finishing as runner-up at Euro 2008 and winning its fourth World Cup in Brazil in 2014. No one in France this month will have a bigger target on their back.

“We can’t complain even if our opponents play defensive with all 11 players,” said midfielder Sami Khedira.

Germany’s remarkable consistency owes something to the size of its population and the strength of its domestic league. But it has also been built, in part, by turning one of international soccer’s longstanding customs on its head. Instead of cycling through managers every two or four years, like most national teams, Germany has left its head coach, Joachim Löw, in place for a decade.

Rarely seen on the sideline without a crisp white shirt—collar open, cuffs turned up—Löw first served as an assistant under Jurgen Klinsmann from 2004 through the 2006 World Cup. After Germany finished third at that tournament, Löw took over as manager. Now, 10 years on, he will try to repeat the feat of France in 2000 and Spain in 2012 by winning the Euro immediately after lifting the World Cup. Germany is considered one of the favorites at this tournament, along with the host nation France.

“I would say that most of my time as national team coach is already behind me,” Löw said in a recent interview with the German newspaper Bild. “Eventually, I think, maybe the team, the organization or I will need a new goal.”

There aren’t many goals in soccer loftier than those Löw has already achieved with Germany. His winning percentage makes him the country’s most successful manager of all time. In international soccer, a tenure like Löw’s is almost unheard of. National team managers are judged almost exclusively by their performances at major tournaments. Every two years, they go on trial for their jobs. Most of the time, they lose.

The 24 managers who will begin Euro 2016 on Friday have been in place for an average of three years and seven months. A quarter of them are lame ducks, due to retire or take club jobs after the Euro. Not Löw. His contract runs through the 2018 World Cup, which would be his fifth major tournament in charge.

Because coaching stints are so short, national styles in soccer tend to stay broadly the same. While managers enter and exit through a revolving door, most countries are forced to stick with the same core of key players, and the style of play reflects their strengths.

For Germany, Löw has achieved the opposite. Under his leadership, a nation once known for its old-fashioned defensive discipline now plays some of the most modern, attacking soccer on the planet.

“We have our structure, but in the last 10 years the game changed,” Germany and Bayern Munich goalkeeper Manuel Neuer said. “We don’t play like 10 years ago.”

At the 2014 World Cup, Die Mannschaft led the way with so-called “gegenpressing,” a high-energy approach to hunt the ball in packs and force turnovers high up the field. This summer, influenced in part by the tactical innovations of Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich, the Germans are expected to evolve again, playing almost without a designated center forward.

Of course, Löw’s success is partly down to timing. His tenure has coincided with the emergence of the most expertly-crafted generation of players ever to roll off the German production line. Löw has been able to use 108 of them over the past decade, compared with 97 for France over the same period. His Euro 2016 squad includes 14 of the 23 players he took to Brazil.

The story of German soccer’s grassroots revamp has followed the team through every major tournament since Löw arrived. Spurred into action by the twin fiascos of the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000—Germany was eliminated in the quarterfinals and group stage, respectively—the country’s soccer federation resolved to re-examine every aspect of how children are taught the game.

It invested heavily in youth coaching. It beefed up the competitive, national leagues for younger age groups. And at the top, it strengthened the operations side of the national team, bringing in former playing star Oliver Bierhoff to act as a full-time general manager.

“After Euro 2004, we decided to work on a new playing style with our young players, based on more possession play, more attempts to dominate and a more positive attacking approach,” Löw said in 2010, mid-revolution. “The aim was to impose on opponents rather than react to them.”

It’s safe to say the plan worked. In 2014, Germany ended a 24-year drought by lifting the World Cup in Brazil.

Since then, the rest of Europe has been plotting to take down the Germans. But not everyone seems prepared for it.

Spain is in a period of transition following the ignominy of its World Cup defense in 2014, when it went home after the group stage. Italy, desperately short on attacking talent, looks unlikely to repeat its run to the final from four years ago.

England has the opposite problem: a wealth of attacking talent, but a defense without much mettle. Only France, among the traditional European powers, is expected to carry the fight right to the Germans—a potential matchup looms in the semifinals.

On home soil where they won the 1984 Euro and the 1998 World Cup, Les Bleus are brimming with attacking talent, from Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba to Atlético Madrid forward Antoine Griezmann, but are somewhat shorter defensively after losing several players to injury.

“We haven’t proven anything yet to compare ourselves with teams like Spain and Germany, the reigning European and world champions” said France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris. “For all of us, it’s clear that it’s the most important competition of our careers.”

Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com