Four Tournaments, Four German Collapses: The Number 9 Myth and the Substitution Trap

On 17 June 2026, in Moscow, I said into a microphone on a digital sports channel that Germany would not get out of the group. Ten days later, Kim Young-gwon tapped the ball past Manuel Neuer in the 93rd minute, Son Heung-min rolled it into an empty net in the 96th, and the team that had won the 2026 World Cup left Russia bottom of Group F. I was right. But during that same broadcast I called Leon Goretzka "Gomez" three times in a row. For a month afterwards, social media reminded me of that more often than of my prediction. Mispronouncing a player's name is a fault of the ear. Getting a prediction wrong is a fault of the trade. I only ever made the first one. I called Germany's exit while the whole world was still dreaming. History belongs to those who speak first. But history does not spare those who speak first without understanding why they were right. Eight years after Miroslav Klose retired, German football is still paying off that debt. FOUR DEFENDING CHAMPIONS, FOUR GROUP-STAGE DEATHS At the 2026 World Cup in Brazil, Germany lifted the trophy at the Maracana through Mario Gotze's goal in the 113th minute. Klose left the national team with 16 World Cup goals, an all-time record. Joachim Low had a golden generation at his disposal: Manuel Neuer, Jerome Boateng, Mats Hummels, Toni Kroos, Thomas Muller, Bastian Schweinsteiger. Four years later in Russia, the squad was almost unchanged. That was the problem. Germany lost their opener 1-0 to Mexico, Hirving Lozano scoring in the 35th minute. They beat Sweden 2-1 through a Kroos free kick in the 90th-plus-fifth minute, then collapsed against South Korea. From 2026 to 2026, four defending champions in a row — France, Italy, Spain and Germany — were eliminated in the group stage at the very next World Cup. The pattern is so brutal that the media gave it a name: the curse. Germany did not stop at one. Euro 2026, played late in June 2026, ended with a 2-0 defeat to England at Wembley in the round of 16, Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane scoring. At the 2026 World Cup in Qatar, Germany lost 2-1 to Japan, drew 1-1 with Spain, beat Costa Rica 4-2 and still went out on goal difference. At Euro 2026 on home soil, Germany lost 2-1 to Spain in the quarter-final to a Mikel Merino goal in the 119th minute. Four major tournaments in a row. Four exits. And each time, the same question was asked on every broadcast: Germany have no real number 9. AN ANSWER TOO EASY TO BE TRUE That question is not wrong. It is just too easy, and easy answers tend to bury the real problem. After Klose retired, Low tried Mario Gotze as a false nine. He tried Mario Gomez. He tried Sandro Wagner. He tried Timo Werner. At Qatar 2026, Hansi Flick tried Kai Havertz as the highest man. Niclas Fullkrug came off the bench and scored — two goals in the group stage, including the equaliser against Spain — but Fullkrug only started when everything was already settled. Based on my experience watching these matches, there is a detail most reports leave out. At the 2026 World Cup, Germany out-shot Japan and dominated possession. At Russia 2026, Germany had around 70 per cent of the ball against South Korea and lost 0-2. The possession numbers did not describe the match at all. Anyone who watched live saw the opposite. Germany had the ball and nobody to pass to. Germany pushed up and, every time they lost it, their midfield was wide open from box to box. The problem is structural, not nominal. When you push both full-backs very high, lift both centre-backs to the halfway line, and ask one holding midfielder to do the work of three, any team with transition speed can attack that space. Mexico did it in 2026. South Korea did it in 2026. Japan did it in 2026. German football did not collapse for lack of a scorer. It collapsed because it lost the ability to defend transitions — the very thing that was its DNA at the 2026, 2026 and 2026 World Cups. Japan's win over Germany is told as a fairy tale about the underdog. I dislike that framing. Behind the so-called miracle is a gap in organisation, in match-by-match preparation, and in using the right people at the right moment. Japan were not lucky. They prepared better. THE TRAP ALMOST NOBODY MENTIONS There is another angle, and I think it is badly underrated: the five-substitution rule. IFAB trialled five substitutions during the COVID-19 period and made the rule permanent from the 2026-23 season. That changed the nature of major matches completely. Previously, the 70th minute was when the starting eleven ran dry and a manager had only three changes. Now the 60th minute is when a team can replace nearly half its outfield players and turn the last 30 minutes into a war of attrition. For squads with depth, that is an advantage. For squads with speed, it is a lethal weapon. Japan sent on Ritsu Doan and Takuma Asano against Germany in 2026; they scored in the 75th and 83rd minutes. South Korea in 2026 were the same — they did not keep the ball, they waited, and they made changes to accelerate at exactly the right moment. Germany had better players than Japan and South Korea. But they used the bench as a rescue measure, not as a weapon. Fullkrug is the clearest evidence: a centre-forward who scores goals, sent on only when the team had already run out of road. I may be wrong. Perhaps the five-sub rule is a footnote, and the deeper cause still lies in youth development. But remember this: modern football is no longer won in the first seventy minutes. It is won in the last twenty. WHAT I STILL BELIEVE A correct hot take does not make a reputation. A wrong hot take, at the right moment, becomes a legend. That is not a licence to talk nonsense. The summer of 2026 taught me something: people remember the shock more than the contract. I once wrote that Manchester United throwing 89 million pounds at Romelu Lukaku was a mistake, and I lived with that through season after season. I kept writing, kept being wrong, kept correcting, and kept coming back. At 42, I still write as if every match were the last one I would ever live through. And what eight years of watching German football taught me is simple: a football nation does not collapse overnight, and it does not revive on the back of one signing. Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz are the next generation. They are talented enough to change the story. But talent cannot fix a broken structure, and it cannot fix the habit of substituting too late. If Germany get out of their group at the next World Cup, remind me of this line. And if they collapse again in the 88th minute, remember that the man who called it right in Moscow said it first.