Is a legacy what you leave behind in the past or what is built upon what you leave in the present? The history of something or the same thing’s unwritten history? Nobody would doubt the legacy of Sir Alex Ferguson left at Manchester United, winning 13 of the club’s 20 top-flight titles during his 27 years at Old Trafford, yet the club have failed to build on his success and just completed an eighth season in a row without winning the league. They haven’t won anything in six of their eight post-Ferguson seasons so far. But, if anything, the club’s decline has cemented his legacy. He arrived in the mid-1980s, he transformed the club, and the same club has, since his departure, failed to live up to the standards he created, which has only served to enhance his own legacy, his own reputation. That’s the thing about a legacy. Whatever you leave behind cannot be undone by what comes next.
Which brings us to Joachim Löw as he enters his seventh and last major finals in charge of the German national team. What will his legacy be? Has he already ruined it? And can we even define it before seeing what comes next?
The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. Exactly eight months later, on July 9, 1990, West Germany won the World Cup. Their third. The official reunification of East and West Germany didn’t occur until October 1990, so the World Cup still saw West Germany compete as, well, West Germany.
Just two years later a united Germany took part in their first tournament since 1938 and suffered a shock final defeat, before much of the same team lost in the quarter-finals at the 1994 World Cup. The Germany that tasted glory at Euro 96 was still, really, a West Germany team. Only three players in the 23-man squad had been born in the east, and only Matthias Sammer had ever played for East Germany. One of the other two players, Rene Schneider, played just once for the German national team and it didn’t come at that tournament. The success was built off the back of West German excellence.