Manchester City’s treble-winning manager Pep Guardiola has been partially blamed for the recent decline of the Germany national team.

Former German midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger told British radio station Talksport that Germany lost some of their values because of the way the Spaniard coached during his time in the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich.

“When Pep Guardiola joined Bayern, when he came to the country, everyone believed we have to play this kind of football, like short passes and everything. We were kind of losing our values,” said Schweinsteiger who played under Guardiola for two seasons.

It was a trophy-laden spell for the Bavarians including three Bundesliga titles but they lost in the semi-finals of the Champions League in each of their three seasons under Guardiola.

Schweinsteiger believes the Manchester City manager’s philosophy is partly responsible for a loss of traditional German football values over the last 10 years.

“I think most of the other countries were looking at Germany as a fighter, we can run until the end and everything. The strengths got lost through the last seven, eight years. We were more focused on playing the ball nicely to each other. That’s one of the reasons,” Schweinsteiger said.

The last time German football won a major tournament was at the 2014 World Cup, when Pep was still managing Bayern. After the tournament in Brazil, Germany has one more time in the semi-finals of Euro 2016.

Since that tournament, Germany has been eliminated from the group stages of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, they also stopped in the round of 16 of EURO 2020. Currently, coach Hansi Flick is also under great pressure when the German team won only 3 out of 11 most recent match. They were whistled by their own fans during a 0-2 home loss to Colombia in June.