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The bungled response to Covid-19 didn't come as a total surprise. Germans know that the country's bureaucracy is slow to swing into action at the best of times. The fact that crucial technological developments seem to have bypassed the public service didn't help. It's no secret, for example, that federal, state and local governments have only slowly come to terms with the digital revolution. German health departments still report the number of infections by fax, rather than digitally. When schools were told that students needed to be taught remotely, some teachers took that to mean that they would simply post photocopied worksheets to their students once a week. And don't even mention German Rail and the coverage of the mobile phone network.

But now, as Covid-19's global reach prompts comparisons not just of infection numbers, vaccination rates and fatalities but also of government responses, German inefficiency is no longer a well-kept secret. Germans can't keep complaining that their trains are always late but then find solace in the idea that others believe Germans are naturally more efficient. It's the realisation that German stuff-ups are now regularly reported in the New York Times that has come as a shock.

Similarly, the millions of Germans who are convinced they would do a better job than Jogi Löw have long known about the weaknesses of Germany's national side. Löw and his team just haven't been that good since their triumph in Brazil seven years ago. But nobody else seemed to take much notice of the slide. That's changed: now that Germany has succumbed to North Macedonia it is no longer possible to pretend that this was the same side that beat Brazil by six goals in the 2014 semifinal and went on to win the cup.

Germans feel that they not only need to get on top of the pandemic, they also need to restore their reputation as world champions of efficiency and innovation. They need not just to win their next qualifier -- given that their opponent will be Liechtenstein, that's perhaps not such a big challenge -- but also to convince others that they are still one of the heavyweights of world football.

When it comes to football, there's a short-term remedy. Germany just ought to field its best side -- which means that Jogi Löw must admit it was a terrible mistake to tell Thomas Müller, the star performer of Champions League winner Bayern Munich, that his services were no longer required. Having Müller in the side might at least prevent the embarrassment of exiting Euro 2020 at the group stage.

Then there is the pressing question of who will be Germany's new coach. Four of the eight clubs currently competing for this year's title in the Champions League are coached by Germans, and their names naturally came up when Löw announced his resignation. But that's not how the German Football Association works. It won't appoint a Thomas Tuchel (the head coach of Chelsea) or Jürgen Klopp (who's in charge of Liverpool); they are too independent or too flamboyant. (Not that either of them would want to give up their current gig in Britain.)

Löw's job is more likely to go to an understudy, in the same way that Sepp Herberger's assistant Helmut Schön became head coach in 1964, Jupp Derwall followed Schön in 1978, and Löw got the job when his immediate boss, Jürgen Klinsmann, resigned. Perhaps Germans should simply transfer their attachment from the men's to the women's side, which has won thirteen of its last fourteen games, including, most recently, a friendly against Australia.

Unlike Jogi Löw, Angela Merkel can't draft somebody for her cabinet whom she had previously sent packing (although there would be no shortage of potential candidates). And, to stay with the analogy, while the Christian Democratic Union might be as conservative as the German Football Association and pick an uninspiring understudy as Merkel's designated successor, it won't be up to the party to appoint the next chancellor.

Germany could well do with a Jürgen Klopp of politics: somebody to motivate and inspire them as they face their next big task, curbing the emission of greenhouse gases. They also need somebody to remind them that their glasses are half full rather than half empty; after all, despite the chaos surrounding the government's handling of the pandemic, so far proportionately fewer people have died of the virus than in eight of Germany's nine neighbouring countries. (Only Denmark has done better.)

On 19 April, the Greens will announce who will run as their candidate for the chancellorship in September. As the Christian Democrats are only five percentage points ahead of the Greens in the latest polls, Merkel's successor might be either of the two Green contenders, Annalena Baerbock or Robert Habeck. While neither has the charisma of a Jürgen Klopp, both would be keenly aware of the need for Germany to arrive at last in the twenty-first century. Both would lead a government intent on changing the country rather than administering the status quo. Both would know that the challenge of climate change will eventually dwarf that of Covid-19.

Germans' concern with how their country is perceived has led them to believe that their government's lack of action is a very recent phenomenon. But when was the last time the Merkel government did what was necessary without backtracking afterwards? Some would say that this was in 2015, during the so-called refugee crisis, but it should be remembered that the image of Merkel as an activist relies on a simple narrative: she decided that Germany should open its borders. Germany didn't do that; it just didn't close them. When the Merkel government swung into action, it helped negotiate a deal with Turkey to halt the flow of refugees while simultaneously tightening the asylum laws. In fact, Merkel last acted decisively in 2011, following the Fukushima accident in Japan, when her government decided to phase out Germany's nuclear reactors.

Preoccupied as Germans are with appearances and perceptions, they tend to believe that the decline of Germany's fortunes on the football field began after the 2014 World Cup. But the team that won the cup that year was arguably not as good -- and certainly not as exciting -- as the team that competed in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Germany won in 2014 because the competition was not as strong as four years earlier. In other words, the defeat at the hands of North Macedonia and the government's ponderous response to the pandemic came after a long period of wasted opportunities. The summer of welcome in 2015 and the World Cup in 2014 just felt like moments when Germans were champions of the world.

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