Germany turn to Klopp to rebuild after their World Cup disaster
After the humiliation of a round-of-32 exit to Paraguay and Nagelsmann’s resignation, Germany are on the brink of handing Jurgen Klopp his first international job.
Jul 17, 2026
Germany are closing in on the appointment they have quietly dreamed about for years. Jurgen Klopp, the most charismatic coach the country has produced this century, has agreed the principles of a contract to take charge of the national team, and the German federation says the deal is on the home stretch. It is the kind of hire that lifts a whole football nation, and right now Germany badly needs lifting.
A World Cup that went horribly wrong
The reason the DFB is even in the market for a saviour goes back to a night in late June that nobody in Germany will want to relive. Ranked tenth in the world going into the tournament, Germany were bundled out of the World Cup in the round of 32 by Paraguay, a side sitting 41st in the FIFA rankings. Julio Enciso headed Paraguay in front before the break, Kai Havertz levelled it after the interval from a Florian Wirtz cross, and then came the part that really stung. For the first time in their history, Germany lost a World Cup match on penalties. Havertz, Nick Woltemade and Jonathan Tah all missed from the spot, and Paraguay held their nerve to win the shootout 4-3.
For a country that built its identity on getting these nights right, on being the team you never wanted to face when the pressure was highest, it was a role reversal that hurt more than the scoreline suggested.
Nagelsmann walks away
Julian Nagelsmann did not wait to be pushed. Days after the defeat he stepped down, saying the decision was anything but easy but that the national team deserved a fresh start. He had taken the job as a young coach with a big reputation, and he leaves it having failed to deliver on the biggest stage. There is no dressing that up, though plenty of the players who missed those penalties might reflect that the coach was not the one standing over the ball.
Why Klopp, and why now
Klopp has never managed at international level. He walked away from Liverpool in 2024 talking about being tired, then took a role as head of global football for Red Bull, and most people assumed his days in a dugout were behind him. Germany, it turns out, was the one job that could pull him back. He is set to sign through to 2030, which would put him in charge for Euro 2028 and the next World Cup, and he is understood to have a route out of his Red Bull commitments that clears the way.
What he brings is not tactical reinvention so much as belief. Klopp’s whole career has been about taking talented groups who had stopped trusting themselves and making them feel ten feet tall again. Germany have the players. Wirtz, Havertz, Woltemade and the rest are not the problem. The problem has been a team that freezes when the margins get tight, and if there is one coach whose personality is built to fix exactly that, it is this one.
The catch nobody should ignore
Here is the thing that tempers the excitement. International management is not club management. Klopp built his best sides on the training ground, drilling a way of playing over months until it became instinct. As a national coach he will get his players for a week or two at a time, a few times a year, which is a very different craft. The energy and the man-management will travel. Whether his brand of football can be stitched together in those short windows is the real question, and it is one even his admirers cannot answer yet.
None of that will dampen the mood in Germany this week. After the lowest night in years, the biggest name in the German game is on his way to steady the ship. That alone feels like a start.