Jürgen Klopp's Germany Debuted With a Draw. The Interesting Part Is What He Has to Rebuild

Jurgen Klopp led for 32 minutes. Then Kai Havertz limped off, Jamal Musiala never even made the starting lineup, and by the 92nd minute Germany had nothing left to hold on with.

His first match in charge of the national team ended 1-1 against the Netherlands in Amsterdam, Felix Nmecha's early goal cancelled out by a stoppage-time Cody Gakpo volley. It was a fair result on the balance of play, and also a strange kind of preview for what Klopp has actually walked into.

The lineup told its own story

Klopp named 44 players in his first squad, an unusually large group split across two separate camps for Germany's opening Nations League fixtures. Sixteen of them had never been called up before. And yet, when it came to actually picking a starting eleven for the biggest test of the window, he named exactly one debutant: defender Philipp Treu.

That gap between the size of the experiment and the caution of the selection tells you something about the job. Germany arrived at this match having been knocked out in the last 32 of the World Cup for the third straight tournament, a run that ended Julian Nagelsmann's tenure and opened the door for Klopp's return to coaching after nearly two years away.

A federation that keeps exiting tournaments early doesn't get to rebuild patiently. It has to look for new faces while still fielding a team good enough not to embarrass itself against a rival.

An old rivalry with a new face on both sides

The opponent added its own layer of symmetry. Xavi Hernandez was also making his first match in charge of the Netherlands, meaning two of European football's most recognizable managers were both starting from zero on the same night, against each other, in front of a sold-out Johan Cruijff Arena. Xavi's side, missing Frenkie de Jong, Matthijs de Ligt, Xavi Simons and Memphis Depay to injury, still finished the game with 55 percent possession and nine shots on target.

Germany, for its part, lost Musiala before kickoff to a thigh issue picked up in the warm-up, then lost Havertz on the half hour. Marc-Andre ter Stegen made eight saves to keep the visitors level as long as he did. When Gakpo finally broke through, finishing a swift counter off a Ruben van Bommel cross, it felt less like a shock than an inevitability given how much of the second half Germany spent defending.

What Klopp actually has to fix

None of this is really about one draw. Klopp inherits a squad that has gone from four World Cup titles to three consecutive early tournament exits, and the players who used to define that era, Manuel Neuer and Antonio Rudiger among them, have already retired from international duty. Ter Stegen, restored as the clear number one after a season disrupted by injuries at Barcelona, is one of the few genuine constants left.

When an established coach takes over a national team after a run of tournament disappointments, is the real test his tactics, or his ability to convince a talented but scarred group of players that this time will actually be different?