Inka Grings speaks clearly: “There is no room for too many extra sausages in football.”

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Inka Grings, since you took over the national team in January, there have been young players in the squad, such as Smilla Vallotto, Alayah Pilgrim and Iman Beney. Is it your mission to rejuvenate the squad for the 2025 European Championship in Switzerland?
Inka Grings: I have no requirements in this regard. But in general I don’t shy away from using young players. You only gain experience on the field, not on the PlayStation. But I would like to say: these young players are not there because they are nice or because they won the lottery, but because they have earned it with their performances. Of course they will make mistakes, that’s part of it. You should also grant that to young players.

This breaks up a group of established players who have been playing together in the national team for years.
What I do is not extraordinary. It is very useful to break the patterns a bit. In principle, it is not wrong if you know each other well, if you respond well to each other. Automatisms are valuable. But you can also see from the players and staff that new players who can do something are very good for everyone. They bring a breath of fresh air and a different dynamic. The competition is stimulating. Like before the World Cup, when I declared an open three-way battle for the position of the goalkeeper. Gaëlle Thälmann benefited from this.

Why?
Because she handled the whole thing very well and extremely professionally. Her response was very powerful, she is a professional through and through. Gaëlle knew she had to do more and she did. What she brought out of herself was very refreshing. If we don’t work with such incentive points, the players don’t need a coach.

Thalmann has resigned, and this week Fabienne Humm also announced her resignation from Nati. What do you say to her?
Fabi is a great person, a great player and an absolute role model for every girl. She showed how much is possible when you believe in yourself and live your dream. At the same time, her example shows that there are great employers in Switzerland who make such careers possible.

But lately there has been unrest. Ana Maria Crnogorcevic, Switzerland’s most-recorded national player and top scorer, publicly complained about not calling her up for the Nations League against Italy and Spain. How much did it bother you to read that?
If a player is not nominated, I even expect her to be irritated, angry or disappointed. If she wasn’t, she’d be in the wrong place. On the other hand, I also expect people to be vigilant in public. It’s completely legitimate to disagree and bring it up internally. But it is not legitimate to criticize publicly.

The incident is reminiscent of Granit Xhaka’s training criticism of Murat Yakin.
Maybe. You see: ultimately as a coach I want players with emotions and not yes-men. But they need to know in what form criticism is appropriate and how and where not. We are always willing to have a personal conversation. I can have a say in that; As an emotional player I also had to pay the price for that. At Duisburg I was once suspended for months because I publicly criticized the coach. Football is a team sport, there is no room for too many extra sausages. It was right that I was chosen.

You probably saw things a little differently then, right?
Of course I didn’t understand it at the time. But in retrospect this was the only right thing to do. After this incident I realized that I always have to subordinate myself to a team. I learned from it.

Doesn’t this mean the end of Crnogorcevic’s Nati career?
No. This is how we communicated from the start. That was for this meeting, where I also wanted to see new faces and test players.

Will she be back in the selection for the next matches?
I will announce the line-up on Monday.

As a former world-class striker, how annoying is it for you that your team hardly scores any goals?
Relief! That’s pretty awesome. If we don’t look for qualifications in promising positions, I almost become desperate. I know that scoring goals seems much easier than it is. Nevertheless, attacking players are measured by goals. We must meet these pressures.

Are too few qualifications practiced in the training?
Absolute. If I compare it with the training for goalkeepers, where the work is very specific, there is still potential for the attackers that can be utilized. Regular goal training from all positions would provide more certainty and confidence.

Is the Nations League more of a curse or a blessing in your eyes? On the one hand, the national team needs results and goals, but on the other hand, it is also an advantage if you can compete with top teams like Spain.
It’s a blessing and a curse. It is an experience that hurts a lot in terms of results and can also frustrate the players. I’m also concerned and not happy with the results. But I am convinced that we are on the right track. We are still in a testing phase. When we look at the match against the Italians, they felt like they had no chance despite a 1-0 win. If we perform like we did against Italy, we will gain experience. And we also create euphoria because people see that we leave our hearts on the field.

Now it’s against Sweden and again against Spain. Points will be difficult to earn.
We have to be realistic: it is difficult for us to compete against Spain at the moment. We could probably get stuck into the goal with ten men at this point. We shouldn’t just look at the result against Sweden either. It is important that we see good development, especially among our young players. This is also a major challenge for the players because we work results-oriented by nature. But I am confident: we are a small nation and don’t have the largest selection of players, but we still have great potential. That is why we must work carefully, focused and patiently.

Source : Blick