Germany’s Awful World Cup Showing Blamed On Late-Night Gaming

TheSportster

By Rodrigo Lobato

Published Jul 22, 2018

Germany's showing at the 2018 World Cup caught everyone off guard, but recent reports say late night gaming binges could be to blame for this result.

Last week, the World Cup was over and together with it a soccer fever that takes place for a full month every four years. This was a tournament full of surprises from the beginning — despite the predictable outcome as France took on the ultimate undergod team of Croatia. Perhaps one of the biggest surprises was when the former champion couldn’t pass beyond the group phase losing against Mexico and South Korea. The Germans took this as a big shock due to the elevated expectations of winning that they had after winning the last competition in 2014.

However, one of the most popular German newspaper may have had a good reason to explain the deficient performance of the four-time World Cup champions. Bild claimed that many of the Bavarian stars were playing Fortnite and FIFA until early hours of the morning in the middle of the tournament.

Germany started the tournament with the wrong foot losing against Mexico 1-0. Later, they beat the Swedish team thanks to Toni Kroos' last-minute free-kick goal. For the last game, they faced Korea, losing 2-0 with goals in the 92^nd and 96^th minute.

The German newspaper reported that the coach, Joachim Löw, and his assistant Oliver Bierhoff noticed that several players lost sleep for playing video games until late hours. Some were even staying up until 4 a.m. This situation reached such a dimension that the technical staff of the German team chose to take drastic measures, turning off the Wi-Fi connection so that their players did not play video games online. This came out after the forward Thomas Muller denied cliques in the squad, admitting that their preparation could have been better. Without a doubt, this is the worst World Cup for the Germany national football team, since this was the first time in their history that they don’t pass to, at least, the second round.

Video games are becoming more and more common in the professional athletes' lives. To allow them or not during an important tournament is a coach decision, but these are all professional players who should know when they can afford a Fortnite binge.