Hansi Flick says he is the right coach for Germany despite Japan humbling, Joshua Kimmich says players 'accountable'

Hansi Flick maintains he is the right man for the Germany job despite a heavy 4-1 defeat to Japan in the two sides' international friendly.

Goals from Junya Ito, Ayase Ueda, Takusma Asano and Ao Tanaka consigned the Euro 2024 hosts to a chastening defeat in Wolfsburg, as Flick's men succumbed to a fourth defeat in their last five games.

It was another sobering evening against the Blue Samurai, who also inflicted a 2-1 defeat on Flick's men at the 2022 World Cup as Germany failed to progress from the group stage in Qatar.

But Flick remains upbeat and says he is the right man to turn his side’s fortunes around.

Per The Athletic, he told reporters after the game: "I know in football there is a dynamic and I cannot forecast what will happen but from my side we try everything to prepare the team well.

"I think we are doing a good job and I think I am [the right man for the job].

"I am very disappointed and we have to admit that Japan have a very good team. We don't have the means to beat such a compact defence.

"We started well. But they score with their first chance, we come back and level and we felt the support, but then they score again. The second half there were too many individual mistakes."

Up next for Flick's side is a match against 2022 World Cup finalists France, which takes place at the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund on Tuesday.

Flick highlighted the importance of facing such strong opposition in the absence of competitive action, with Germany qualifying as hosts for next year's Euro 2024.

"We will prepare well and recover. We chose such games because we want to play against the best,” he added.

Meanwhile, Bayern Munich midfielder Joshua Kimmich was keen to shift the emphasis away from Flick and suggested that the blame lies solely with the players for a series of underwhelming displays.

"I think it was a deserved defeat, even in terms of scoreline," he told German broadcaster RTL.

"Japan even had chances to score more. We clearly didn’t do enough. We’re not able to get our quality onto the pitch. There’s a lack of self-confidence.

“We always only say that we have a lot of quality, but we see that far too rarely. So we have to question ourselves and our quality.

"We players are on the pitch, I hold ourselves as players accountable.”

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