For me personally, it's actually a surprise to see the big decline of the German national team after the great games at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil when they became world champions.
I actually expected them to continue playing at the same level and be competitive still in all the major competitions after 2014, but that didn't happen.
Maybe they didn't do the generational change well? Is something else the problem? It's really hard to give a good answer.
German clubs are still good and achieve good results in European club competitions, but the national team has not been at the expected level for a long time.
As I said before, I don't think they will be favorites at the European Championship next year, but as the hosts they will still have an advantage that they can use.
I am sorry but that was 8 years ago. I know 2014 feels like just yesterday but pandemic started about 3 years ago, 3 years! Time just flies very very fast and 2014 was 8 even 9 years ago, I confused it with 2022, so even I mistook it, it was 9 years ago!
But world cup wise, it was in 2022 so it was 8 years difference. This is why it's normal for Germany to be not as good as they used to be, it's not the same players, sure some of the players were same, but they were 8 years older and some of them were younger and newer players that didn't play in 2014. It means basically a whole new team at that point and we shouldn't expect them to do the same.