His Fellow Germans Won’t Enjoy Eric Braeden’s No-Holds-Barred World Cup Take

Rich asked Eric Braeden what he thought of the German national team's recent struggles. Braeden did not reach for diplomacy.

"National team has sucked," he said. "Simple as it is."

That is the kind of answer you get from a guest who is not performing an opinion. Braeden was born in Germany, has lived in the United States for more than 60 years, and played the game seriously enough that his analysis comes with receipts. He arrived at the show still coming down from a World Cup he described as an addiction, and he was in no mood to soften anything.

His diagnosis of Germany's problem was tactical, not emotional. They forgot to attack over the wings. Braeden argued that only Barcelona, in the era of Messi and Iniesta, had the short-passing brilliance to break teams down through the middle, and that everyone else who imitates it gets stuck. Germany's right winger, he said, kept turning inside to show off instead of driving to the touchline.

"How a coach cannot see that immediately," Braeden said. He does not think the current manager belongs at that level, and he has a nickname for him that he freely admitted is a pejorative.

The wing theory is where his defending days showed. Braeden explained that when a winger runs all the way to the goal line, the defense turns and the confusion starts. Who do I cover? Who is behind me? Who is ten feet back and unmarked? That flicker is all an attacker needs, and then the diagonal pass comes back across.

Which brought him to the Messi cross that Rich said he had rewatched at least 50 times.

Braeden's read was that England defended Messi very well for about 85 minutes. Then Messi drifted to the right wing and simply stayed there, unobserved. That, to Braeden, was the whole game.

"You don't leave a guy like Messi alone ever," he said. "Ever."

He described how he handled it as a coach and a player. Assign your best opponent to one of your worst players, provided that player is well conditioned, and tell him to do nothing else for the entire 90 minutes. It drives brilliant players insane. Even Messi, he said, hates it.

The lapse left him in unfamiliar territory. For the first time, he found himself feeling for the English, which he noted is not the natural instinct of a German.

On Sunday's final he claimed no rooting interest, since he respects both teams enormously. Part of him wants Messi to lift it one more time because it is the last we will see of him in a World Cup. But he picked Spain, calling them the most disciplined team he has seen, and credited the fact that most of them play together at Barcelona all year. They attack as a team and defend as a team. Lose the ball and three or four teammates arrive immediately.

He had thought France would win, comparing Mbappe, Dembele and Olise to the three tenors. Brilliant players, he said, but it is a team sport, and discipline matters more.

His most pointed comments were about the United States. Braeden thought this group was very good and had a real chance. He also believes the reversed red card against Balogun, which he insisted was never a red card under any circumstances, poisoned the team from the inside. In his telling, a call came from one gentleman to another gentleman named Infantino to get the card reversed, and the players understood exactly what that would look like.

Braeden's claim is his own, and he offered no evidence beyond his reading of the players. But he was unambiguous about the effect. The squad knew that winning that game would have left them attached forever to the accusation that the leader of the country had rigged it for them.

"That influenced them very negatively," he said. "I swear to you."

Rich asked whether he would keep Pochettino. Braeden would. Good track record, he said, and by his read a good man.

As for his own trophy, the 1973 U.S. Open Cup he won with the Maccabees as the token German on a roster of seven Israelis, two Ethiopian internationals, Brazilians and Argentinians, it exists now only in a photograph. Everything else burned in the Palace of Versailles fire.