'I saw a lot': Klopp's insights after Germany debut

Before the announced analysis of all the insights from his turbulent but morale-boosting debut in a 1-1 draw at the Netherlands, Germany coach Jürgen Klopp had the unwelcome task of having to reshuffle his squad for the next game on Sunday against Greece.

Thigh muscle injuries sustained by Jamal Musiala and Kai Havertz forced Klopp to have Florian Wirtz and Jonathan Burkardt join the squad earlier than planned and not only for next week's games against Serbia and in Greece. 

Team officials said scans revealed that Musiala suffered a muscle fibre tear during the warm-up and Havertz a muscle strain after half an hour. Both have left the squad and travelled to their clubs Bayern Munich and Arsenal, respectively, for treatment.

Wirtz could play on Sunday in Augsburg as the Nations League continues without a break after the great fight against the Dutch which French sports newspaper L'Équipe described as a "boxing match" which the hosts would have won on points.

A new beginning

For Klopp, who is tasked with rebuilding the German team after a World Cup round of 32 exit against Paraguay, nothing would be more desirable than having more time to teach his idea of intense and high-pressing football. 

But captain Joshua Kimmich sensed a new beginning, saying: "Not everything was perfect yet. But you could tell that everyone was willing and eager to win games."

 Klopp has only one training session and has said "We could only scratch the surface." But he felt vindicated against the Dutch after his first crash course. 

"I saw a lot. Counter-pressing situations, I would like to see much more, but there were still some," he said as the players' attitude and ability to endure adversity differed massively from the summer lethargy at the World Cup.

Like taking a vocabulary test

"The patterns of play can't be natural yet. They're learned. And as everyone discovers when learning: There is that moment when you briefly know all the vocabulary you learned in the morning, then maybe you still know some of it at lunchtime. But the next day it wouldn't be a bad idea to look at it again," he said.

"Did I get the impression that we were even heading toward perfection? We weren't», he said. But he said that would not have been good either because he wanted to see room for improvement as an advantage.

A victory would have been possible after Felix Nmecha's first-half opener. 

But even though Kimmich said that the late equalizer by Klopp's former Liverpool player Cody Gakpo felt like a defeat, for Klopp the performance and the approach at Johan Cruyff Arena meant more than the result.

"Much more important to me, rather than somehow holding on to a 1-0 lead, are all the other pieces of information we got. We're going to work with those now," Klopp said.

Debutants make an impression

Klopp's debutants will come out of this well as he praised all three of them.

Klopp said that Philipp Treu played "exceptionally" over 90 minutes as a right-back and confirmed the hope that Kimmich might now stay in central midfield forever.

Treu's Freiburg team-mate Yannick Engelhardt, who came on late, was praised while Klopp liked Younes Ebnoutalib so much as a replacement for Havertz that he almost forgot that the Frankfurt player was also making his debut.

No 500 draws

Now they have to follow it up with full points against Greece who won their first match 2-1 against Serbia. 

Klopp knows that hard-fought draws will not make anyone happy in the long run as he said: "We are in a results business. And we shouldn't draw the next 500 games."