Yeah. Rudy is a really good, but if Kroos goes down then not bring Geiger, Weigl or Meyer, could really come back to bite us in the ass
why would we bring Geiger??? You do know he's been injured since mid-March and won't be fit until next season. Weigl had a pretty average season too. or Ulreich, although Trapp doesn't deserve anything. Plenty of 1BL keepers deserved it more than a bench keeper at PSG.
And by the way first time in a long time I've thought that Benzema did a good job lol he has a habit of scoring shitty goals so i hope he doesn't do that in the WC
To be fair, Trapp's been better than Leno in the NT games, so I'd drop Leno but i don't understand why he doesn't move abroad to another club to save his career
yep and he seems to have had a fallout with Deschamps and even seems to say that racism is involved. And from before EC16 to now he's played no role for the French NT. His NT career has been basically over for 2 years, will also turn 34 at the next WC. as for Trapp he was pretty poor vs Brazil, pretty much because of lack of game time. There is no need for club bench keepers in the senior NT. If it weren't for ter Stegen we could have been in danger at the WC.
Well I'd somehow hoped for Benzema playing for France since I believe it's highly possible that he wouldn't contribute with much Well Germany has always great keepers
tbh I forgot about Geiger's injury and was just listing other 6s with NT talent who I'd like to see tested out with the NT players, if I was the coach. Re: Weigl; *shrug* so he had a mediocre season, why should that bother me when Dortmund was so horrifically coached this year? He was still exceptional the past two years and neither his talent, nor his vision/decision-making, suddenly disappeared just because nobody has let Stöger know that he's allowed to give his his players instruction on what to do when they have the ball...so that attackers won't smash into each other every damn game because their poorly organized runs intersect. I mean, there's a reason Tuchel is still ready to pay 50M to bring him to PSG and why Pep is still interested in him if he doesn't get Fred, ya know? I have my gripes with Jogi that I have been very vocable about, but he's not bad at structuring possession for his team...like a less out-dated Arsene Wenger...which is a big step up from Stöger. And though Bosz's possession schemes weren't worse than Jogi's...and in some respects gave his team even more room for creativity...his terrible organization against the ball undermined that all and robbed his team of any confidence with the ball. I guess I just don't put nearly as much stock into club form for team selection as I do talent, on-pitch decision-making, & how a player fits into our NT...aka why I'm not worried at all about Kroos' mediocre season with Real or Müller & Özil's "down years" Anyway, even if we eliminate Weigl as well as Geiger, why isn't Meyer in the provisional roster to fight Rudy for the back up 6 job so that we are covered in case Toni does pick up an injury early in the tourney? Are we really going to rely on Rudy to be the metronome of our possession game, or is Jogi planning to stick Rudy at RB and shift Kimmich back to the 6 if Toni is out?
Baumann is hands down the third best option for the NT in my eyes. Not just in terms of shot-stopping & organizing his defense, both of which he's very good at, but also, Baumann has the ball skills & understanding of possession to step in for the NT without causing any major disruptions to how we play...even though he's obviously not of the same quality as Neuer or ter Stegen. Being better than what Leno has become is feint praise. He's really fallen off hard over the past ~3 seasons.
Not that it matters for the French. Even without Benzema as an option, they get to build their attack around: Mbappe & Dembele (who will battle for BdO's in their primes), Fekir (who I'm personally a huge fan of), Lemar (another player I love to watch), Griezmann (although I think he's over-rated and is basically just a french Müller), Lacazette, Thauvin, Martial, Coman, Augustin, etc. and Giroud (as a plan B off the bench, aka their Gomez). Thankfully DD has decided to have a falling out with their best midfielder maestro (Rabiot), and so they won't be able to really control matches behind that attack without conceding lots of counter opportunities...as none of Kante, Pogba, Matuidi or Tolisso is exactly who you'd want pulling the strings for your midfield. N'Zonzi is the only guy they brought along who actually sits back in the midfield, and he's no more than a poor-man's Rudy. They're still the team who worries me most moving forward, but they have done a nice job of undermining themselves for this tourney and so I'd rather face them in the final than Brazil or Spain...who I am rather uncomfortable about likely having to face in the semis if Messi doesn't just goes off on them, as this new generation of spanish midfielders that they have behind Asensio & the attack, might just be even more stacked than ours.
Hopefully Spain inexplicably falls apart like they have the last couple tournaments, because if they get some momentum they are going to be extremely hard to beat.
Yeah, if Asensio and the attack delivers for them...and they stay healthy in defense...they are lookin like our biggest threat. I’m really impressed by their new coach and the talent in that midfield is just silly, even from where we sit. I mean Biscuits, Isco, Thiago, Saul, Koke, Silva, Javi, the list of Spanish midfielders who have started to really come into their own since the last WM is incredible. Fortunately their depth in back is much less impressive, and how clinical they will be in the final third is still a big question if neither Rodrigo nor Aspas has a break out tournament.
They don't have a lot of pace or explosive players that can really impress you with their athleticism in attack, but yeah. The midfield is stacked, the FBs are high-quality, and Ramos is a guy who can really lead and organize from the back-line.
why not Meyer? Maybe it's because he's just started to play in that position this season. Before he was more of an attacking player whether for Schalke or the NT senior/youth level. also look at Meyer from mid-Feb 12 games 1 game suspended 3 games not in the squad 4 games as an unused bench player for the remaining 4 games. he played the full game for 2 matches and the final 2 matches he was subbed out at beginning of the 2nd half, like between the 46th-49th minute. that's not a good run at all leading into the WC while playing in a new position. Also hasn't played a game since April 7.
I agree with @Ger90 calling Meyer up would be a bit early. Hopefully with a good 2018-19, guys like Havertz, Goretzka, and Meyer can put themselves in the 2020 conversation though.
Goretzka made the preliminary squad though. other guys who I would like to see them be put into consideration are guys like Weigl, Wolf and Gnabry. Maybe even Philipp, of course depending on how the do in the next few seasons. I think Havertz should be integrated by 2020 as he has the potential to take Ozil's place in the NT in the long run and Ozil is fast approaching the end.
Weigl would’ve been my choice, but how is Meyer less proven than LeGo in any substantial way? Never mind that Meyer is a much quicker decision maker than Goretzka, and so is more effective when space is limited...whereas Leon needing a second on the ball, causes him issues when he doesn’t have space on the break. By 2020 our options should be immense. By then enough of Geiger, Weigl, Meyer & Maier should be established to lock down the 6; ditto Dahoud, Havertz, Amiri, Demirbay, Goretzka at the 8/10. I’m not convinced Wolf has NT potential by any stretch, but Philipp I like a lot. He’s very Müller-esque with his movement...though I worry he’ll be the next Kruse/Stindl in terms of Jogi ignoring him, despite playing for Corporate-Borussia
The teams I want to see fail miserably in the World Cup are Spain and Colombia. It was shameful eight years ago when Germany let those motherf uckers beat them and to this day it still pisses me off that scumbags like Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos and Xabi Alonso have a World Champion medal they didn't deserve, and to call them legends is an insult to any football legend. To make matters worse the Germans allowed two years later to have their Euro trophy tally equaled by those backward motherf uckers, that is unacceptable. As for Colombia I hate Colombians plain and simple. I also don't want Argentina to win because their sports media is unbearable enough as it is. I dread to imagine what would happen should the argies win.
I hope that’s just the salt of an embarrassingly bad loser, and not what I’m afraid is actually behind that post...
What are you afraid of actually being behind my post? And no, I'm not a bad loser. I didn't post any anti-Italian rants when Italy knocked Germany out of the 2012 Euros, nor did I do anything similar when France did the same two years ago. My beef is with the Spaniards only. So may I ask you again Rosebud, what are you afraid of actually being behind my post?
truth is this, we should root against teams like Spain, Argentina, Brazil and France. If Italy would have qualified, then them too. why? Because they are rivals and Spain/France are also our European rivals. There is no friendship in football. and Argentina/Brazil their issues are more about WC trophies. As well as a growing rivalry between Germany and Argentina after we knocked them out in 3 consecutive WCs. Also add 2 consecutive WC finals in 1986 and 1990. Brazil if we meet again will 100% want revenge for that 7-1 destruction at home, tied as one of their biggest losses in their history.
Spain have never been our rivals before the current generation. So though I think they're our biggest threat in this tourney, and they achieved the back-to-back-to-back majors that the DFB robbed us of by pushing Gerd out of the team before Euro 76, I don't really feel a strong rivalry with them yet. We weren't yet talented or mature enough to win when they beat us in 2008, and it would've been a significant upset if Mesut hadn't tried to fight through the obvious penalty right before HT in 2010, and we had managed to win. By the time we were serious contenders again...and didn't stumble over Italy before running into the spaniards...they had fallen apart. I can see a rivalry growing between us if we run into each other a few more times late in the knockouts, but I don't feel it yet. Especially not with how much that was learned from their football underlies our current success. And we never seemed to intersect peaks with Brazil before now. So I don't feel any rivalry with them either...their golden generation was coming to a close in the early 70s when we first stepped onto the world stage as a football superpower, and our core had already grown too old to compete when the Brazilians rose again in the 90s, after their disappointing ousters in the 80s. We had that flukey meeting in the 2002 final, but frankly, I was so thrilled that we had even made it that far that I was able to get over Kahn making his only mistake of the tourney against them pretty quickly...especially with how magnificent that Phenomeno, Ronaldinho, and Rivaldo trident was. So there wasn't any real rivalry there before 7-to-1, and until they can actually beat us, there is no post-7-to-1 rivalry either. If we meet them in the final and it's a close match, then we could have a budding rivarly on our hands, but that hasn't happened yet. Our rivals are the Dutch, the Italians, the Argentinians, and the French...but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't root for Messi if we shit the bed before facing them and he drags them to a WC title like people like to pretend Maradona did in 86. They're not catching us either way with what a mess their FA is, and there's little point to begrudging greatness.