They were feted for their mental strength as they won the World Cup but Toni Kroos is of the opinion that Germany have lowered their concentration levels since their triumph in Brazil during the summer.

The favourites in Scotland's Euro 2016 group were held to a draw by Republic of Ireland at home and picked up just one point from their double-headers against Poland in Warsaw and the Irish.

Kroos, who scored the opening goal in Gelsenkirchen, believes his colleagues need to raise the bar again, and soon.

The Real Madrid midfielder, right, said: "This is incomprehensible to me because we seem to have lost our way. Our levels of concentration are not at the same levels as the summer and that's twice this week we have been hit with late goals. This was a total unnecessary loss of two points.

"We played well for long periods of the game, but we couldn't get the job done professionally."

Kroos' former Bayern Munich team-mate Mario Goetze admitted he was frustrated at losing the late goal to Martin O'Neill's side. He said: "We played really, really well until almost the last kick of the ball. It is so annoying. Usually, we take our chances, but we failed to do that against Ireland and got hit with a late goal."

Joachim Loew, the Germany head coach, concurred claiming that his players only had themselves to blame for the mental lapse that led to John O'Shea's late equaliser.

"I don't have a clear explanation of what happened in the final minutes," Loew said.

"We were naive. We did not control the ball. In those six or seven minutes we lost possession, made mistakes in midfield and allowed them to come back at us."

The last time Germany failed to win at least one match out of two consecutive qualifiers was shortly after Loew took over in 2007. However, the Ireland game followed a familiar pattern with Germany enjoying 65 per cent possession and playing most of the game in the Irish half, wasting attacks just like they had in Warsaw.