Former player and Bundesliga coach Matthias Sammer has hit out at the state of German football and joined those saying that the national teams are no longer feared abroad.

“German football is in the biggest crisis I can remember. We are only world and European champions in finding excuses and in finding explanations why it isn’t working out.”

Sammer won Euro 1996 as a player, coached Borussia Dortmund to the Bundesliga title in 2002, was technical director at the national federation DFB 2006-2012 and then board member for sport at Bayern Munich until 2016. He is now an external Dortmund adviser.

The published excerpts don’t make it fully clear what Sammer was criticising.

But the German men’s national team, four-time world and three-time European champions, has exited the last two World Cups in the group stage and won only one of its five games this year. The U21 team also went out in the group as title holders this year.

The women’s team, two-time world and eight-time European champions, then also went out in the group stage of a World Cup for the first time earlier in the month.

And with Germany’s hosting of the men’s Euro 2024 tournament around the corner, Sammer hopes for a turnaround so that German teams are feared again by their opponents.

“We don’t have to win everything right away but we must quickly get back to the state where you are afraid outside to play Germany again because no know it is almost impossible to beat them. That is my biggest wish,” Sammer said.