"Mamma mia we're bad!" the country's biggest-selling daily Bild trumpeted on its front page next to a picture of a grim-looking Klinsmann.

"Only 99 days to the World Cup and our national team is playing worse than ever before," the paper said. "If we play like that at the World Cup we'll be obliterated."

Bild awarded all Germany's players its worst rating of six, which stands for "did not earn the money", while giving the impressive Italians a mixture of twos and threes, the equivalent of "strong" and "average" respectively.

"1:4 - Germany shrinks to a soccer dwarf," was the headline in Thursday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The paper blamed Klinsmann's tactic of instructing his defenders to pressure the Italian midfield players higher up the pitch for the loss.

It also criticised Klinsmann for leaving the experienced Christian Woerns out of Germany's World Cup plans after the Borussia Dortmund defender blasted the national coach's management style in the media.

"The four-man defensive line played in such a way that the excluded Christian Woerns was the only German winner of the evening, albeit a sad one," the paper said.

It was Germany's worst result against Italy since a 5-2 defeat in a friendly in 1939. The 1990 World Cup winners have not beaten a top class side since 2000 in a 17-match winless streak.