Today Rudi Völler announced the roster. IMO that's the best roster he picked since a long, long time. Ballack, Ziege and Nowotny are missing with injuries; Neuville, Jancker and Asamoah are out due to their bad performances. The Roster: Goalies Oliver Kahn FC Bayern München 15.06.69 57 - Jens Lehmann Borussia Dortmund 10.11.69 16 - Defence Frank Baumann SV Werder Bremen 29.10.75 14 2 Arne Friedrich Hertha BSC Berlin 29.05.79 5 - Christoph Metzelder Borussia Dortmund 05.11.80 16 - Tobias Rau VfL Wolfsburg 31.12.81 1 - Marko Rehmer Hertha BSC Berlin 29.04.72 30 4 Christian Wörns Borussia Dortmund 10.05.72 41 - Midfield Jörg Böhme FC Schalke 04 22.01.74 9 1 Torsten Frings Borussia Dortmund 22.11.76 19 2 Dietmar Hamann FC Liverpool 27.08.73 48 4 Jens Jeremies FC Bayern München 05.03.74 46 1 Sebastian Kehl Borussia Dortmund 13.02.80 14 2 Carsten Ramelow Bayer 04 Leverkusen 20.03.74 35 - Bernd Schneider Bayer 04 Leverkusen 17.11.73 22 1 Offence Fredi Bobic Hannover 96 30.10.71 21 4 Paul Freier VfL Bochum 26.07.79 6 - Miroslav Klose 1. FC Kaiserslautern 09.06.78 25 14 Kevin Kuranyi VfB Stuttgart 02.03.82 - - Benjamin Lauth TSV München 1860 04.08.81 1 -
Baumann is the first who cancelled the participation. He had his comeback this weekend, but suffers under a torn muscle again. Jeremies is not certain for the next weekend, but he is travelling to the training camp.
be interesting to see what kuranyi brings to the squad and its nice to see Voller drop the dead weight in Jancker
Jeremies is definitely out and so is Metzelder. For him Völler nominated Andreas Hinkel, VfB Stuttgart, born 3/1982, no cap yet. Hard job for Jürgen Kohler in his last game with the U21 without Kuranyi, Lauth, Rau and Hinkel.
i am expecting a big game from Frings. we should win this game by at least 2 goals. good riddance to Jancker and Asamoah. However, Neuville will be back soon, I think
Game starts in half an hour. German lineup: Kahn - Frings, Friedrich, Wörns, Rau - Ramelow, Schneider, Hamann, Böhme - Klose, Bobic
1-1 FT 1-0 Ramelow (8.Böhme) 1-1 Rasanauskas (73) The game started very well. The first quarter hour was one chance after the other for Germany and it looked like a very secure win. The goal was about the third good opportunity - a Böhme shot that would have been wide was deflected by Ramelow with his heel. After fifteen minutes the German team suddenly stopped playing football and it went very boring. Lithuania was too weak to take an advantage from this situation. After the break the level improved a little, but it never reached the starting period again. After about seventy minutes Lithuania started to attack for five minutes and basically must have scored the equaliser already before. In between a goal for Germany was annulled as the assistant decided on kickoff when Bobic got the ball ON the line and passed it back to Schneider who scored. Oddly Völler took out Bobic, who was classes better than Klose today, and just seconds later Lithuania scored the equaliser after a Rau mistake. A few minutes later Lithuania had the big chance to even score the game winner before they were pressed to the defence again. But even five minutes stoppage time did not help Germany today. Under the bottom line it was Germany's third weak game in the third qualifyer. Best German players were Schneider and Bobic. Lithuania btw is no 104 is the FIFA ranking, won one game in the last two years against the Faroes and had three players, who don't even have a club at the moment.
I didn't think we (Scotland) would be top of the group when we were 2-0 down after 15 minutes in the Faeroes! Seriously, Germany has nothing to worry about from us (yet). We were very poor again, Iceland were maybe slightly worse. This Group must be the worst in the whole of Europe!
this german team is an embarassment! without Ballack they are in the bottom half of europe. vogts must be licking his chops now!
I don't know about that, since he was still talking about only the second place after our match. But maybe this (very) poor result for Germany will make him adjust his opinion. But I would imagine that Berti will be highly motivated for the matches with Germany. This is now a glaring opportunity for Vogts to force the German football public (principally the media) to revise their opinion of him. However, we face a very important game on Wednesday in Lithuania. A win sets us up very well, since second would then be secure and we could then have two goes at the German team with no fear of missing out completely. A loss, however, brings Lithuania into real contention for second place.
I would not 'blame' Ballack for everything - also with him the last games were pretty bad. In some parts the team is too bad: - left backer (Rau might grow if he sees playing time in Munich next year, otherwise Ziege might return to this position, but he is not constant enough) - right backer (Friedrich can play that, but he is needed in the central defence; Hinkel can play that, but three young players in the defence are too much) - one central defender (Friedrich is seeded for me, but Wörns is too weak; Metzelder is still doing too many mistakes, it will be better with Nowotny although I'm afraid that Völler will still stick to Wörns next to him) - left mid (in the NT Böhme never shows his abilities, Ziege was also pretty bad in the offensive role on the wing) - playmaker (someone creative would be needed; Ballack and Hamann are good on their position, but they just play their part and don't have the ideas to make the game surprising) Right mid (with Schneider, who in the NT is oddly performing some levels higher than in the club this year) and forwards (get no good balls) are not the problem. But the existing level should still be enough to defeat most teams with more or less difficulty. I think they also got a mental problem that they shift some gears back when they realise that they got the opponent under control (which is also proved by the fact that they play their best against top opponents although they regularly lose these games). Then they bore themselves to death, at some point the opponent scores and then the Germans are not able to switch the key again. If they kept playing on this high level for a whole half, then they would lead safely and would not even have to worry, but relying on a 1-0 is always more than dangerous.
I saw the match and thought Germany were poor in the second half, in fact I think Lithuania fully deserved a draw. Not that the German commentators gave them any credit. That may be part of the German teams problem, not giving opponents like Lithuania enough respect.
We haven't had any depth in Germany for over ten years. When one, two, or three key players are missing the whole team goes to pieces. It used to be that we had 20 world-class players, now we might not even have 5, so when some are missing we're fielding the best of the crappy rest. That should still be good enough to beat teams like Lithuania, but when the whole team doesn't give a damn, this is the result. German players still think that teams like Finland play on cross-country skis (to paraphrase Rainer Calmund during the WC2002 qualifiers). No one seems to have learned anything; that it doesn't take a nation of great footballers to make a good team, but only about 10-15 individuals. There's a good chance that Germany will still qualify, but Scotland now sees it chance and will fight for it. Will Germany? Personally, and this is harsh, I would very much like it if for once we didn't just squeak by and continue to live the lie that we can just turn it on when need. I'd like us to fall flat on our face, to finally bring the bring the message home.
First of all I agree with you. Secondly, we did fall flat on our face(ie. Euro 2000) Lastly, our run in the 2002 cup was because Kahn had the run of his life and we benefitted from an easy draw. We were outplayed by the US and had The referee correctly called "The hand Ball" we would have probably lost that game. Franz has stated many times that for Germany to continue to be successful it will have to draw on it's minority population which has links to other countries. That was an unheard of philosophy 10 years ago. But it just seems that the pedigree is no longer there.
First of all I dont know why Voller chose to start Rau at defense...he is far too inexperienced and that is not even his normal position. Why not use Kehl or or at least put Ramelow as the center back with Rehmer and Friedrich. I dont think there is too much need to worry, this team has a lot of injuries right now. Nowotny, Metzelder, Ziege, Ballack, Deisler, Baumann, Jeremies...With the exception of Baumann, most of these players would be starters. This is basically half of the starting team that is missing and also most of the top players. Still they should have been able to easily win this game but I dont think we should get too worried. I wasnt able to see the game, did Lauth or Kuranyi play?? If so how did they do?
Kuranyi did play in the second half. He played just as well as the other guys IMO. I think Germany sat back too much in the first half, and like everyone says, Das zweite Tor war ein echtes Tor. Even if we didn't play quite up to standards that we would have liked, we should have had the victory. -Nick
I think Germany did fall flat on its face during the World Cup qualifiers, hence the results with England and Finland. I would have thought that the players would have learned from this.
Kicker ratings: Kahn 3 Frings 3.5 Friedrich 3.5 Wörns 5 Rau 4.5 Ramelow 3 Hamann 4.5 Böhme 5 Schneider 3 Bobic 4 Klose 4.5 Rehmer 5.5 Kuranyi – Freier – Chances 9-5 Game rating 4.5 Player of the Game: Gintaras Stauce (Lithunia’s goalie, formerly MSV Duisburg) Most ratings are correct IMO, Ramelow should rather be 3.5 as he could not keep his level of the first half, Bobic was way better 2.5 or 3 I think and Rehmer was not the catastrophe they are making out of him (4 or 4.5 would be okay). Btw. I read a comment by Friedrich, who said that aim was to get no goal against. That is pretty shocking for me, and it’s absolutely right that this philosophy gets punished. Bayern with their mixture of arrogance, class and boring play can afford to play like this, but not the NT. If they keep the level of the first twenty minutes until halftime, then they lead 3-0 and can do whatever they want to do in the second half. But if you’re leading early and then say “okay, care that you don’t get a goal”, then this is just horrible.