England : Germany Friendly Game/Post Game thread [R]

I've had the sound turnt off while the national anthems were on.

 

yeah good point. i heard though that some fans booed the national anthem

 

Yes, he played a good game as did Micah Richards.

Honestly, England at least deserved a draw but that's football.

 

Well it wasn't too hard a midfield to dominate last nite, was it? Considering how Germany didnt have a midfield to begin with?

And he made 'excellent' passes my butt. He made good passes, that's all. And for a 'star' player isnt that the least you could ask?

Sad.

 

They probably still had to pay up for the luck they had back in 2001 when every stinking shot somehow found its way into the goal...

 

True true.

Another thing. Am I the only one who doesn't tink that Robinson totally ********ed up on the Kuranyi goal?
Schneider's cross was mean because he didn't hit the ball right. Robinson was supposed to stand where he did. The reaction on Hitzlsperger's shot that lead to Schneider even able to cross was worse imo.

 

Good riddance

Germany were quite woeful last nite. One of their worst matches under Loewe definitely. But considering that it was really a C team, and an experimental one at that, it could be forgiven. The defense tho was quite worrying even tho they had mostly 1st team players there.

But all in all good job whipping the limeys at their home ground!

 

Having watched it (and this is after hearing the word botch a dozen times beforehand), I felt that Robbo didn't really botch it. He should have punched it. That would have been smarter. But keepers aren't conditioned to punch on their own line. They might tip or catch, but their first instinct in that position will never be to punch. But he couldn't tip because the ball was too low and he may have tipped it off the bar or into his net. So he made up his mind to catch it, and did. It them seemed that he felt he might be going into the net, so he released the ball to avoid carrying the ball into goal. However, the two center-back were ball watching and Kuranyi wasn't. But the English press has become so accustomed to blaming Robbo that they saw it as his fault.

The second goal is more of a typical Robinson problem as he is easily scored upon from range.

 

Actually I thought the English fans were very fair as I heard very few boos on TV. But than again, you didn't hear the English fans during the game, so...

Also, the choreography with "Danke für 2006" was a nice gesture.

 

He stood totally wrong in the situation and could neither catch not punch it,
because he toutched the ball too late.
He must have anticipated the situation earlier and that´s the difference
between a class keeper like (for example) Cech and an average-good keeper
like Robinson.

But to play such dirty cross to use such weakness is class,
cudos to Bernd Schneider, our white Brazilian.

 

Any video of this???

 

One might say a win is a win, but I actually thought Germany was relatively bad yesterday compared to their recent performances. The team clearly allowed way too many chances for England and didn't create nearly as many chances as they could and should have.

The blame for the defensive breakdowns lay primarily with the midfield and the fullbacks. Lahm was the only good defender in the midfield, I thought. There were too many challenges lost, England were getting too many second balls due to less than optimal positioning and there were too many easy balls lost due to imprecise passing. Odonkor in particular had a very bad game at both ends.

Friedrich and in particular Pander were too often overmatched defensively against Richards, Cole, Wright-Phillips and even Beckham, who could have done a lot of harm with more precision in his crosses. The defense wasn't helped by Lehmann's unfortunate positioning which allowed Lampard's goal and his bad clearance to Owen just before half time.

While Germany had better passing skills and ball control than the English, their moves broke down all too often when a little more precision -- which Germany had actually shown over the last year or so -- could really have embarrassed the English. Although England seemingly lacked organization at times Germany were unable to take more advantage of this and so had to rely on poor goalkeeping and a long distance shot to score.

On the positive side Germany had an excellent work rate and didn't just have the better passing game but actually had a game plan which tried to take advantage of this fact. When the team is more used to playing together and/or when injured players like Frings, Ballack, Klose and Schweinsteiger are available again one can imagine that Germany's passing game can be quite devastating.

Both central defenders had decent games although they should have done better occasionally.

Lahm was the best German midfielder because he didn't only defend better than the others he also showed intelligent passing and good ball control. If Frings is unavailable I would like to see Lahm playing in central midfield again. The position of the guy who breaks up the opponent's attacks and initiates the attacks of his own team has become so important that one would seem to need a class player at this position.

Kuranyi should have done better with his attempted lob over James in the second half but he had a decent game I thought. Although he was the only striker he was keeping Terry and Ferdinand quite busy, and he also showed decent touch and ball control compared to earlier times.

While Pander struggled defensively and while he has to work on his passing his set pieces were an improvement over what Germany had become used to in recent times. Having a guy who can score from distance is worthwhile too.

 

In the last game ever played at Wimbley Germany beat England if I am not mistaken. Is this the English first international loss at the new Wimbley?

 

If anything, even a bad performance from this German side should be seen as encouraging because despite missing six starters, at least four of whom have been extremely key to Germany's success, they beat an England squad that, despite the whining, was in much better shape in terms of having starters available than us. This just shows the depth that we've accumulated and the promise of the German youth system. And four the record, I thought Germany played fine yesterday. Odonkor had a bad day, Schneider was decent if below his usual sparkling standard, and Friedrich proved why playing Lahm on the right to make room for Jansen is a smart idea. That's really it as far as disappointing performances. They say Brazil and Argentina could field two world-class XIs with their pool of players, I think it's time that Germany was included in that list.

 

Na, we can't, and neither can they.

England are nowhere near world class so beating them there doesn't make germany's 2nd/3rd team world class.

 

England's players still showed the inability to be calm on the ball and move wel off the ball when put under pressure.

Most of their passes ended up going backwards, and then long balls up the field to the wings where the wing play was good, where cole, wright philips, shorey and richards showed good touch and skill.

Or cole would make a run and something would come off that, but there was no passing through the middle through german players with linkups or any real incisiveness. No control of possession either unless it was pointless passes between the defenders.

Lampard played some ok passes but faded as described above.

 

totally agree

while we're at it, the worst defending was for england's goal. pander on debut played a total air swing and schneider with a really bad tackle and then a deflection off metzelder's foot sent the ball just past lehmann.

 

The most accurate description of the match.

Except IMO the central defenders were very good and all the blame for attacks developing lay with the strikers and midfielders who did not defend up the field well.

And that pander after his goal played well attacking and defending.

 

I would agree that the defensive breakdowns certainly didn't start with the central defense. However, there were a few scoring opportunities in the box for Dyer, Owen and Lampard which probably shouldn't have been for a "very good" performance of the central defense.

He played better than before, certainly. I wouldn't say he actually played well though. While he didn't have the same problems with Brown which he had against Richards I recall instances in the second half where Beckham and others were given space and time on Pander's side to cross the ball. Pander was somewhat fortunate that these crosses came to nothing.

 

Yes we were lucky to play England and not a WC06 Italy or France yesterday. Probably they would have destroyed this ersatz team.

But just to put this into perspective again let me remind you that this team has never played before and probably will never play again in this lineup. Players were playing out of position and/or were stuffed into the Löw system only quite recently. They trained only for two days before. I mean Lahm playing DM! First I thought Löw went nuts but actually he knew quite well what he was doing.

Yes they made too many defensive errors and were quite nervous in the first 20 minutes or so. Also I think they could have played more aggressively in the defence. We didn't get a single yellow card.

But c'mon, this was played at Wembley. Given all these odds they still managed to win. So, enjoy it!

BTW:
As for bad luck. You can talk about being unlucky if you hit the bar. But if you miss the open net two times you are not unlucky but inapt.

 

We should have won that match, anyone will tell you that, we should have scored 3 goals by fulltime, germany got lucky with the first goal and the second was just a freak and hit and hope shot
Aloso this was our B-Team because our best player like rooney, gerrard, lennon, asley cole, gary neville, andy johnson were all not playing, the referee was also biased, he was giving us yellow cards in a freindly, but it was not a proper match so neither can take anything from it

 

According to posters on the England forum Neville is not one of your best players, and if he is that is pretty sad. Ronney is a waste of space for the national team. How many competitive goals has he scored since euro2004? Why do people continue to proclaim that his abilities as a striker will bring England back to its winning ways? It seems that every time one of us says he isn't a good striker because he doesn't score goals the response becomes (well he's not a striker). Which is it? Overrated striker or supporting forward who rarely scores or creates?

Germany was missing a full compliment of players as well; Ballack, Frings, Klose, Podolski, Jansen, Schweinsteiger (all would normally start). They were missing immediate back-ups too; Borowski and Gomez for example.

Of the usual first team regulars many played out of position. Lahm is a right back and was played as a defensive midfielder for the first time ever in his career. Schneider, a right winger was played in the hole behind Kurnayi.

England should have won this match no doubt. Germany handed them a hat full of gilt-edged chances. During the second half the German midfield continully passed the ball directly to England players in dangerous positions. When you give away possession so easily it would be criminal not to create scoring opportunities from it. Even Lehmann tried to help you score with multiple blunders that should have resulted in goals.

Germany would normally look like this:

-------------Lehmann----------------
Lahm------Merte---Metze---Jansen
Schneider---Frings---Balla---Schweini
-----------Klose---Podolski

 

zippy85

Well before the game we were told here not to make excuses because of our 11 injured players if we lose and now you come over here and make the excuses. Including the ref excuse who gave you for example a free kick at the box for fouling Metzelder and 4 minutes injury time though there were no injuries.

Refering to your injured players makes no sense because we were missing even more pratically including the whole midfield and forwards.

And no, you should not have won it because as I said missing the open net is not bad luck it is bad technique.