Champions Germany look to find reset button after Mexico meltdown

Germany are not used to losing opening matches at a World Cup, with the 1-0 loss to Mexico marking only their second defeat in their 19th opener. They must now quickly address existing problems ahead of their next game if they don’t want to risk a shock early exit.

Moscow (dpa) – Germany closed their training camp in Vatutinki to the media on Monday to assess the damage after a 1-0 defeat against Mexico in their World Cup opener.

A planned news conference with Philipp Lahm was cancelled and the retired captain of the winning 2014 team may now instead prove useful to the squad as they seek a badly needed reset ahead of now crucial games against Sweden and South Korea.

Germany have only gone out once in the first round of a World Cup, 80 years ago when that round was played in a knock-out format.

They have never exited in a group stage but instead of switching into World Cup mode after some modest build-up results like in the past, Germany are suddenly looking shaky with Sunday’s game at the Luzhniki confirming problems Joachim Loew’s team has been having for a while.

The Bild paper Monday spoke of “defensive chaos” and warned that “a historic exit looms.” The Sueddeutsche Zeitung found “holes the size of Siberia” in the back line.

Centre-backs Jerome Boateng and Mats Hummels are part of the class of 2014.

Both were far from their best on Sunday but were also left alone much too often against the counter-attacking Mexicans, who could have easily won with a bigger margin than the lone goal from Hirving Lozano.

The Mexicans managed to take Toni Kroos almost completely out of the game, and his defensive midfield partner Sami Khedira was as little a factor as playmaker Mesut Oezil or forward Thomas Mueller.

“It is an unusual situation. We have always won (our first game) in the past. We have to accept it and learn our lesson,” Loew admitted.

The coach said they will not panic and “throw our [game] plan overboard” but quick adjustments and improvement are needed.

Sweden and South Korea are surely beatable but the main concern for Germany fans is that Sunday’s game once again highlighted problems seen in the last two build-up games, a narrow 2-1 win over Saudi Arabia and 2-1 defeat in Austria.

Previous winless games against France, England, Italy and Spain also showed that the passing game is not as fluent as a few years back and too many balls are being lost early as the defence lacks stability and the attack creates only a few chances.

“We are always talking about the same problems in the last games and have to try to stop them,” Mueller lamented.

Even though there is plenty of fresh blood in the squad, pundits wonder if the players may have lost their hunger from four years ago even though Loew said that was not the case.

He emphasized that everyone was going flat out to try to give the four-time winners back-to-back World Cup glory for the first time.

“You can get the impression that the team may have peaked four years ago,” the Sueddeutsche said.

Nothing is lost yet but the players must now deliver under pressure if Germany don’t want to follow the fourth champion in the last five World Cups to exit early, following France in 2002, Italy in 2010 and Spain in 2014.

Mexico must meanwhile confirm against South Korea and Sweden that Sunday’s success, thanks to a perfect game plan and the speed of Lozano, Carlos Vela and Javier Hernandez up front, was no fluke.

Juan Carlos Osorio spoke of “a milestone” for Mexican football but overall kept his feet firmly on ground while the whole nation celebrated.

“We will rest and recover for South Korea which will be extremely difficult. Sweden will also be tough and we can not crack. Let’s see how far we can get,” he said.