Germany are in danger of becoming a poor man's England after their 2-1 defeat to Italy in the Euro 2012 quarter-final. By the time the 2014 World Cup comes along they will have gone 18 years without a trophy - their longest since the 18-year wait between the 1954 World Cup win and the 1972 European Championship victory.
And that statistic is especially galling in the fatherland after they were heavily tipped to end Spain's international dominance in Ukraine and Poland. Naturally the press haven't taken defeat well.
Thursday night was an eighth tournament match in which the Mannschaft failed to defeat the Azzurri. The Guardian's translation team have deciphered some of the papers, with Die Welt drawing their ire onto coach Jogi Löw: "He chose the wrong tactics and the result was this bitter elimination." There's also the poetic epitaph that is "the script of the defeat carries Low's handwriting".
Allgmeine Zeitung opt for the hoodoo angle: "History repeats itself. Italy remain Germany's nemesis. Löw's squad rotation doesn't work, and Balotelli's goals put the Italians in the final." Sueddeutsche Zeitung add: "The German team must ask itself why they once again produced a mistake-packed performance at the end of a major tournament."
The brave Morgenpost devote a front page to the sculpted physique of bête noire Mario Balotelli under the headline "ALBATRUM" ("NIGHTMARE").
Löw talked of tears flowing in the dressing room, and popular tabloid Bild seem to share it: "Aus! Aus! Der Traum ist Aus!" - "Gone! Gone! The dream is gone!" "Again no great German victory. Again, no title," they add. "The last one we won was in 1996, 16 years ago." Try being English, mein freund.
The Bilde brilliance continues:
"And once again we lose to the Italians. The fact remains: in a tournament, we cannot beat them. And our beautiful run of 15 competitive victories is broken. Oh, how bitter it tastes! Jogi, where were was your golden touch this time? Löw gambles, but what worked so well against Greece was wildly off the mark against Italy. Gomes and Podolski are total failures, and both need to be frozen out in the near future. Against Italy our Ozil tornado was just a gentle breeze – and the rest was not up to much. Schweinsteiger is an example – he has been nowhere near his World Cup form, and when it mattered he was very poor."
Whatever the opposite of schadenfreude is, there's an outpouring of it in Deutschland.