On Sunday in Germany, Joachim Löw was everywhere all at once. In the Frankfurt airport, his frown was plastered across nearly every paper on the stand. The Frankfurter Allgemeine, a burly broadsheet not unlike the the Wall Street Journal in this country, featured an illustration of his face on its front page, crumpled and then flattened, dappled with distress. "Celebrated too early," its caption began. "A week ago we were enamored with [Löw]. He was a star. Since last Thursday's 2-1 result against Italy we now know that he didn't get everything right, but rather, he actually got a whole lot wrong …. Grrrr."

In Hannover, a mustachioed man with a bookshelf of a belly stepped into the dining car of a train headed for Berlin with the Bild, perhaps Germany's most infamous tabloid, folded under his arm. "Another Final Without Us," the first half of its headline read. "Can one still believe in Jögi?" He pored over a post-match breakdown the entire way to the capital city, hunched over and frozen, breaking away only for another wheat beer. He had four in just over an hour.