Germany’s UEFA Nations League relegation proves the competition’s weird brilliance

Hello friends, and welcome back. International week is often presented as a frustrating interruption to the normal season, but here at Tactically Naive we have decided to embrace the change of pace. Not least because, in the week that the Premier League gave its departing chief executive a £5 million farewell gift, club football is clearly in need of a lie down.

Jogi makes a boo-boo

Regular readers of Tactically Naive (hi mum!) will remember that back in October, we were a little conflicted about UEFA’s Nations League. We liked it, but we were a little scared of it, and perhaps we just didn’t really understand it. What was it? Where was it going? And who was it for?

Well, friends, we have an answer. The Nations League is for anyone who can enjoy the phrase “Germany have been relegated.” Which is to say: pretty much everybody.

TN has nothing against Germany in particular. This column believes in the universal brotherhood of all humankind and the complete abolition of all borders, which means we are ideologically bound to hope that all internationals end in a 5-5 draw. But the whole point of the German national team is to provide the consistent drumbeat of excellence against which the rest of the continent founders: France exist to be mercurial, Spain to disappoint, England to dream and then rudely awaken. Meanwhile, Germany exist to just get on with things. Hence that Gary Lineker quote:

Eat crisps. Crisps are good.

Wait, no, not that one. Sorry. This one:

Have you considered crisps as your potato-based snack of choice?

No, no, hang on. This one:

Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.

This is why the world enjoyed Mexico’s win at the World Cup so much. It is also why the world assumed that the debacle in Russia would be a temporary blip, and that normal service would be swiftly resumed. This is Germany we’re talking about, after all. They don’t do rubbish. When they do, it was probably just an accident. Nothing to worry about.

That’s probably all still true; at least, it’s still impossible to think otherwise. Germany will be fine. Germany must be fine. The mind refuses to even conceive of a proper, multi-season, generational decline.

But we must take the moment to acknowledge the fine work of the Netherlands, who beat France 2-0 to send the Germans down, and for the League of Nations itself, for going big and brave so early. Imagine having the chutzpah to kill Germany off in Season One. That’s not football. That’s Game of Thrones.

Hopp hopp hopp

Going into their make-or-break game with Switzerland, Belgium’s job was clear and relatively straightforward. Three points ahead in the group, they didn’t need to win. A draw would have been absolutely fine. Even a loss might be okay, as long as they picked up a couple of goals in the process.

17 minutes in, things looked even easier. By this point Belgium were two goals up, a position that — thanks to their 2-1 win in Brussels — meant Switzerland needed to score four goals to qualify. In 73 minutes. Against the darlings of the World Cup. The slayers of Brazil. The brave semi-finalists.

Obviously, Switzerland failed to score four. How could they manage that, with Xherdan Shaqiri in the form of his life, against a defence organised by Bobby Martinez? They scored five.

There is, hidden away in this bizarre and hilarious result, a tiny truth about the interesting place the Nations League has found for itself. One of the great problems of international football in Europe is the kind of passive-manic structure of the whole thing: long, slow, and often highly predictable for two years, then all of a sudden the most important thing in the history of history for a solid, delirious month. And then back to the drift.

The Nations League, in its extremely early days, seems to have nestled into this gap. Perhaps this is because nobody is quite sure what to make of it yet. Perhaps it will eventually end up as a kind of international Intertoto Cup, bloated and weird and functionally irrelevant. But for the moment, it seems to be throwing up games that feel important but not all-encompassing.

If Switzerland had roared back to score five against Belgium in a crucial World Cup game, Martinez would be looking for work this morning. If they’d done it in a friendly, it would have been odd but of little note. But here, somewhere between the two, it matters but it doesn’t break anything. It’s a disaster, but not an apocalypse. And given how hot football seems to run these days, that sounds like a healthy space for a football competition to occupy.

It’s coming home. No, not that thing. The other thing.

Weird statistic of the week:

Truly, Gareth Southgate is a miracle worker, and all the children of England will be receiving grey waistcoats this Christmas.