#i can't even explain how fucking stupid 'die mannschaft' sounds in a whole german sentence. idk what bierhoff & his besties were thinking

[holdmybvbeer]

Since some of you had questions about this post, here's why the majority of the German fans refused to use the name "Die Mannschaft"

Oliver Bierhoff (national team manager at the time, later director and CEO of the national teams + academy), initiated the new nickname for marketing purposes. He wanted to establish some sort of brand name that he can sell internationally. He argued "We must have the courage to position the national team as a premium-product". And that didn't sit well at all with the fans, especially in times when fans were already criticising the increasing commercialisation of football. It made many fans feel like if the DFB sees our national team as a product, they must see us fans as nothing but customers. The new branding also came with some other not well-received marketing and commercial initiatives (not getting into the details here). And so the new brand name had become a symbol of the commercialisation of our national team and of how far the DFB had drifted away from the fanbase.

The new name also felt artificial and forced. It's not a nickname that was established organically, it wasn't something that started somewhere and was picked up by more or more people until it became their nickname. It was a name that was chosen by a few DFB managers only.

Because we don't really have a nickname for our team and simply refer to them as "the national team", the change to "the team" also meant axing the "national", which made a lot of german fans feel like they no longer represented our nation (after all, it's only socially acceptable to be proud of this country every 2 years - for the euros and the world cup, so this is kind of a big deal for some).

"Die Mannschaft" is also a rather meaningless name that literally translates to nothing more than "the team". There's no identification or actual connection to our national team (unlike the nicknames of other national teams that refer to their colours, crest or style, ... Les Bleus, Squadra Azzurra, The Three Lions, Red Devils, La Furia Roja, etc).

It's actually such a featureless and mundane term that it almost makes it unusable as a name in a german sentence. Anyone saying something like "the team is playing tonight", "the team didn't play well" or "I watched the team" would mostly be met with confusion ("what team?").

Some have even argued that the name is disrespectful towards other successful teams in Germany as "the team" could be somewhat implying the men's football national team is the only team that matters.

So yeah, there was a lot of controversy. The DFB had hoped that we would get used to the name and that criticism would die down over the years, but that didn't happen. So, after 7 years of most Germans refusing to use the brand name, the DFB realised that there was no point in keeping it and decided to drop it in 2022.