Former national coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg has spoken for the first time about her psychological problems after the German women's soccer team was eliminated from the World Cup and also admitted mistakes. A feeling of pressure on the chest, panic attacks and insomnia were the result, said the 55-year-old in a ZDF interview published on Monday, to internal and public criticism: "I then almost completely collapsed."
The fears, the insecurity and the emptiness in her head had become stronger and stronger - almost "as if the plug had been pulled on me". The German Football Association had announced at the beginning of September that Voss-Tecklenburg had fallen ill.
After a long stalemate, the DFB appointed Horst Hrubesch as interim coach for the German women, who had failed in the preliminary round of the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. The DFB had terminated the contract with Voss-Tecklenburg, which runs until 2025, at the beginning of the month.
Voss-Tecklenburg had also recently attracted criticism because she gave two lectures, although she had not yet been reported as healthy by the DFB at that time. "I then made the public appearances. In retrospect, you can say: How stupid – mistakes," Voss-Tecklenburg said now.