Jogi Loew Gives Ballack Captaincy, Then Slyly Passes It To Lahm

September 2nd, 2010 | by: chris | View Comments

The German captaincy saga, threatening to derail a nation if simply through the wrath of Michael Ballack, will not be allowed its due end, though Jogi may be trying.

Jogi has declared that Michael Ballack is very much Germany’s captain, which would normally put the kibosh on matters. However, he hasn’t been called up and has declared that if he is called up in the future, his place on the pitch will be occupied by someone else. So Ballack’s the captain, but Lahm’s the captain.

Sounds about right.

“I have decided that Michael Ballack will continue being the captain of our team,” the Germany coach, Joachim Löw, said ahead of their first Euro 2012 qualifier against Belgium in Brussels on Friday.

“But I told him that as things stand today I do not see him being able to help the team [after his recent injury].”

Löw said Bastian Schweinsteiger and Sami Khedira had secured their starting spots in midfield after a superb World Cup and that Ballack would have to return to top form to win a place in the team.

“We will see what the situation is in the coming weeks. I will monitor his development and in October I will decide whether I will boost the squad with him,” said Löw, adding that Lahm would remain captain when Ballack was not on the pitch.

Philipp Lahm is said to have “brushed off” the snub, but what snub is it really? He’s captain and he knows it, with Khedira and Schweini going in one direction (the right one) and Michael Ballack going in the other (the one which has a player going from Chelsea to shipping six goals to Borussia Mochengladback over the span of three months). This isn’t exactly the normal situation of “Player X is returning from injury” – Germany showed no need for Ballack in the near or distant future this summer.

The whole thing has a sense that Jogi has just delayed the inevitable, amounting to a nuclear World War III with Ballack’s two-fer wrath coming in October.