There were no goals until Álvaro Morata and Niclas Füllkrug came on, changing the scoreline if not the outcomeWell, there’s a thing. Maybe there is something to be said for these so‑called experts after all. For 53 minutes of this 1-1 draw Germany and Spain played out a carefully hedged, engrossingly mannered game of football. This was a game of midfield squared, of Big Midfield Energy, a quiet debauchery of midfield.Al Bayt Stadium is essentially a vast illuminated fibreglass tent dumped down in the desert scrub. It was packed here, or almost packed. But at times in the second half it was so quiet in the stands you could hear the air conditioning hiss. This is, it seems likely, not...
Caught between pressing and pragmatism, Germany lack big personalities on the pitch in Qatar – and they are not aloneAn angry team meeting. Home truths exchanged. Defeat used as a launchpad for improvement. West Germany did it in 1954 after defeat by Hungary and went on to win the World Cup. They did it in 1974 after defeat by East Germany and went on to win the World Cup. They did it in 1982 after defeat by Algeria and went on to reach the final. But that was in the old days, when Germany was a Turniermannschaft – a tournament team – and they could rely on their leaders, their Führungsspieler, to drag them through.There was an angry team meeting...
Even if Hansi Flick’s side go out in the World Cup group stage after defeat by Japan, some things just matter moreSometimes in football, as in life, you don’t always get what you deserve. We might otherwise now be lauding Germany for defying Fifa before beating Japan in their World Cup opener. Instead, after an upset that resembled Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa in its force and magnitude, the sniping from the critics quickly began.There was a common refrain after Germany’s 2-1 defeat: that they had paid the price for being too distracted by daring to stick up for human rights. As one Qatari reporter’s account, liked more than 200,000 times on social media, put it: “This is what...
After helter skelter draw with Germany, Gareth Southgate must be ruthless and must start with one of his generalsFarewell, then, to all that. We will meet again: at the Khalifa International Stadium, Doha in eight weeks’ time as a matter of fact. But this felt like something else, a final trip to Wembley, probably, surely, for Gareth Southgate six years into this odyssey.And if this is to be a last note in that flip-book – so many memories: the fine results, the tepid midweek draws, the gakked-up post lockdown riot squad – there was at last a sense of familiar faces and old habits. Not to mention a shock of life too from this team that isn’t quite ready to...
Hansi Flick’s side just lost to Hungary and have no regular source of goals but believe everything will come good in QatarA proud footballing nation on a lean run of just one win in six games. A humiliating defeat at home against Hungary. And above all a sense of stasis and frustration, a lack of creativity, the suspicion that for all the talent and trophies in this team, it remains considerably less than the sum of its parts.Germany and England may share a common predicament, but as they prepare to meet on Monday night only one of these nations is currently wracked by existential crisis. And curiously, it’s not the one that has bombed out of its last two international...