BERLIN: Germany coach Joachim Loew is not planning to call up world champions Jerome Boateng, Mats Hummels and Thomas Mueller any longer, saying the team needs to look to the future.

The Bayern Munich trio were part of the 2014 World Cup-winning team but the Germans crashed out of the 2018 World Cup in the group stage, their earliest exit in 80 years.

All three have also struggled for form this season.

“I thank Mats, Jerome and Thomas for the many successful, extraordinary and unique years we shared,” Loew told the best-selling Bild newspaper on Tuesday.

“But in the national team it is now all about laying the foundations for the future. We want to give the team a new face. I am convinced that this is the right step.” Loew said he had travelled to Munich to inform the players.

With close to 250 internationals between them, Hummels (70 caps), Mueller (100) and Boateng (76) were part of the same generation.

Hummels and Boateng, both 30, played together in the 2009 Under-21 European championship triumph as Germany started to reap the first rewards of a major and sustained investment in youth players that had started seven years earlier.

They all graduated to the senior team and took part in the 2010 World Cup. The trio’s international cycle was complete when Germany were crowned world champions in 2014.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2019