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After the national team’s embarrassing World Cup exit, Chancellor Friedrich Merz caused astonishment with a post on the social media platform X. The chancellor praised the team: “Even though going out hurts: what a game. With your commitment and team spirit at this World Cup you have thrilled our country. We are proud of you.”
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Merz’s post drew heavy criticism in the comments. Comedian Oliver Pocher also weighed in under the chancellor’s post on Instagram. “I hope the account has been hacked. But it fits the situation in this country,” he wrote. There was “nothing that could be glossed over” about the defeat, no one had been thrilled. Germany had embarrassed itself and produced a “catastrophic performance”. If a chancellor writes such a completely wrong analysis on Instagram in the middle of the night, Pocher argued, you can only worry about how he assesses other issues.
Germany captain Kimmich summed up the mood after the World Cup exit as follows: “I know Germany from watching television as a child: it was always semi-finals, finals. Of course you want to give that to children and people now, to the current generation as well, and the fact is that we were unable to give that to everyone back home. That is very, very sad, especially at a time when it would do us extremely good in Germany to have something we can be proud of. Sadly, the national team is not that right now, and we all bear responsibility for that.”
The Bayern Munich star continued: “We players who were out on the pitch messed this up. It wasn’t the coach, it wasn’t the media, it wasn’t the referee and it wasn’t the opposition, it was only us.”
Most fans also take a much more critical view of the World Cup exit on X, as the performance against Paraguay was poor and culminated in the first penalty shoot-out Germany have ever lost at a World Cup.
At least Karl Lauterbach (SPD) rated the World Cup exit in a way that was just as unconventional as the chancellor:
International media are also far less enthusiastic than Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU). The paper WELT, for example, quotes the Spanish sports daily Marca as follows: “Germany is no longer Germany. At two consecutive World Cups they have gone out in the group stage – an unprecedented feat. (…) As we said: Germany is no longer what it once was.” The Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport is quoted by WELT as writing: “Germany flop. Nagelsmann failure.”
The initial verdict on Merz’s post on X was clear: “That was nothing.” The tabloid Bild summed it up accordingly: “Merz makes a fool of himself with his posting.”
In the meantime, those around the chancellor have provided an explanation for the much-criticised post. As the Tagesspiegel reports, the message is being presented in government circles as a mistake. According to this account, several possible social-media reactions to the match had been prepared in the federal press office. However, in the night it was not the intended version that was published, but the wrong post.
The chancellery told the Tagesspiegel: “Wrong tweet, wrong timing, wrong button.” The incident was therefore described as “unfortunately very regrettable”.
Twelve hours after his first post and the many negative reactions, the chancellor spoke out again. On X he wrote: “We celebrate our victories together. And in defeat we stand together. That makes us strong. Anyone who wears the eagle on their chest deserves our support and not our scorn.”
For many people in Germany, the chancellor’s X debacle and the national team’s World Cup disaster are likely to be symptomatic of the state of the country as a whole.
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