Former Germany national team head coach Joachim Löw:

It has to be said that in the end, we don’t lack attitude in some positions, but quality. Simply world-class quality. There are some positions.

And the second thing is that we also have to find approaches in training when players are in the youth ranks and transition to the pros, because the step from a well-trained player to a world-class player, who is world-class in his position, is still a huge one. And we certainly make mistakes there.

Because when someone is 18 or 19, they come and then they just run around in a Bundesliga team somewhere. But that’s where it really starts. And we should make individual training a priority in all our day-to-day work.

I understand the pressure to succeed in the Bundesliga. I understand the pressure to succeed from the coaches and the clubs. The only thing that matters in some way is the result in order to survive.

But that’s simply not sustainable; the transition, the individuality, the individual training sessions, we should push those much harder.

At the bottom, in the transition phase, and at the top, in the training sessions of the professional teams, we need to intensify things a lot more and do very specific training for each position two or three times a week.

What does a player need to go from being a normal, good talent to being an international class player, to being a world class player? And that takes between 18 and three, 24, five or six years of work. And we largely miss out on that. That’s perhaps the reason.

I think the word he is looking for is personality. A team with a positive personality will beat a team of quality, in my opinion.