Jul 8, 2010 0
In Praise of Germany
If you’ll be so good as to indulge me, I’m going to wax lyrical for a moment about the German World Cup squad.
We went in with the second youngest squad in the tournament, a group of players who had never competed together on the international stage. Some statistics:
Twelve of the twenty three were of or under 23 years old.
This was the youngest squad we’d taken to a World Cup since 1934.
Twelve had less than ten caps to their name.
Five of them featured in Germany’s UEFA Under-21 team in 2009.
Lahm was our youngest ever skipper at 26.
We went in without many of our best. Rocked by goalkeeper Enke’s suicide in November. Captain Ballack, Adler, Rolfes, Traesch, Westermann all injured.
And yet we topped our group, managed to beat England and Argentina – two teams who arguably looked far stronger on paper, if not on the field – and took it all the way to the semi-final in Durban yesterday, just managing to hold the magnificent Spanish side scoreless with a grinding defensive effort until the 73rd minute, albeit at the cost of launching an attack.
All credit to coach Löw – strategy, teamwork and cohesion have carried us so very far where skill and experience have been lacking. I have no complaints; the next four years are looking bright indeed.
