Bastian Schweinsteiger has claimed that Pep Guardiola and his time managing Bayern Munich has made the Germany national team worse.
After leaving Barcelona in 2012, the Spaniard was appointed as Bayern’s manager back in 2013, where he ended up spending three years in charge of the club.
Despite winning three Bundesliga titles during his period in Germany, one player Guardiola had in his squad at Bayern has shared some criticism for the Manchester City manager and what impact his previous managerial job has had on Germany’s recent international issues.
Schweinsteiger says Guardiola has made Germany a worse team
Speaking on talkSPORT, Schweinsteiger said this on the matter.
He said: “Well, it’s a situation that’s very tricky for the German national team and football in general.
“I think there has been a lot of change, when Pep Guardiola joined Bayern Munich, when he came to the country, everyone believed that we have to play this kind of football like go to get the passes and everything, and we were kind of losing our values which I think most of the other countries were looking at Germany as a fighter, we can run until the end and the strengths got lost through the last seven to eight years, we forgot about that, we were more focused on playing the ball nicely to each other.”
Interestingly, Germany won the World Cup in 2014, a year after Guardiola was appointed as Bayern’s manager, which mirrors how Spain won the World Cup in 2010 a year after the 52-year-old won the Champions League with Barcelona.
However, having only won the 2017 Confederations Cup since then, it’s clear that they have not been able to keep any sort of consistency since their previous World Cup win.
While Schweinsteiger undoubtedly has knowledge of what it’s like to play under Guardiola, having made 64 appearances for Bayern under him, as well as knowing everything about the German national team, his recent thoughts should not be immediately dismissed.
Although, given the amount of time that has passed since the City boss was at Bayern, there must be other reasons why Germany may not be at the same level they used to be.
