LMAO

I got to say, if the Germans win it this time at least they deserved it Unlike just about any tournament before this, they have by far the hardest path to the final

good point.

I mean in 1990 we had to play Czechoslovakia, England, Argentina and the Netherlands in the playoffs. Which is really a walk in the park compared to the teams we faced this this year

So you had to go back 20 years to come up with that... strong.

I went back to the last win ...

well I was a bit tilted by 2002,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_FIFA_World_Cup

lmao

lol at mentioning 2002 of all years. Yeah sure the opponents were easy. But then again, you have to beat the small teams, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_FIFA_World_...FA_Group_2

We play better vs the big teams, cu in the final

Ah, so you're saying you would have probably failed against the teams we faced in the playoffs back then?

Nah so far it was quite easy :D

I root for a netherland vs germany dream final. This would be so fucking great for both countries :=)

Germany will win all the way.

bwaahahahaha, maradonas face after the 1:0 was epic :D


btw, nice way of taking revenge for 2006 argentina, really nice :>

golden. just golden.

best team in this cup, whatever happens from now on.

best team will be the one winning it, whatever happens from now on.

cause all paths to the final are equally hard..

oh wait, they're not

regardless of the path, the winner of the final has beaten the winner of winners of winners etc.

so if one team gets BUYs all the way to the finals, and the other team has played 6+ games for 90 minutes, and gets beaten by said first team, that was basically waiting, you say that first team is better?

if A beats B, it makes no sense to say that B > A.

you of all people, with all your smarts, must know that it is not always as easy as that

means?

just what it says, you can't just say it like that...
the team that ran the most is obviously more powered out, for example.

or maybe the better team can't perform well in the finals because players are injured.. who knows... its just not as simple as you'd like to make it look with you a>b, b> c so a > c logic

i'm not talking about a situation where a team has 5 players injured or whatever, i just say that in order to become the champion, you need to beat the best team. or beat the team that beat what was supposed to be the best team. it's not really fair to take anything away from the champion in normal conditions.

i don't know are you (germans) preparing yourselves for not winning the WC, but you know that in the end everyone remembers only the year, and the champion.

Lets make statements based on ridiculous scenarios such as one team playing five games and the other none!

:D

Well, Germany is the team to beat, is it not?

i see spain and germany equally strong at this point, with the netherlands close behind and uruguay having no chance

agreed.

although we played stronger so far. but with spain, you always know that they probably have the potential to blow everyone away.

i'm fairly relaxed about it. heres to hoping for an awesome game.

We just have a bad coach. We could be much better, but I've lost hope on it happening.

How would you line up the squad?

I, and most of Spain, would send Alonso to the bench, move Xavi Hernandez a few metters backwards and put Cesc in front of him. And, of course, send Torres to the bench and replace him with another attacker or offensive midfielder (which one depends on the oponnent. In this case it just happens that Torres is out of shape so useless).

Where's Bojan btw?

Holidays, I guess. He still needs to step up his game a little for this, and Pedrito can do the job. I miss Guiza more than Bojan (well, I just don't miss Bojan :P).

Agreed on Fabregas btw. I don't get why he's sitting on the bench!?

The coach is scared. He wants more defensive midfielders. But the funny thing is that we have a much weaker defense now since there is no pressure to the oponnent on their half of the field.

Same :D

Alonso is just a poor mans (rich mans???) Xavi and Busquets has pretty much showed he's efficient and effective as the deepest in a midfield three.

The best team doesn't always win.

For me the best team is the one winning (without cheating) and not the one playing the most beautiful football or having the best players.

a trillion ways to win without cheating and still being lucky like a fuck

Ehm, no? Greece won EuroCup 2002.

04 :)

weird I thought of 2004 but wrote 2002 somehow ;o

You're trying to suppress the memory of Greece vs the best team of the tournament (Czech Republic) :(

whenever someone brings up euro04 i still /rage :(

that I will never understand.

I am 100% behind you guys!

well, again the team that didnt play soccer won. not interested in this world cup any more

As much as I wanted Argentina to win you can't accuse Germany of not wanting to play football (anymore).

troll.

you're german, but you cant seriously want your team to win if they play this crappy

vollpfosten deluxe ..

learn to play the game, then come again in 4 years

learn to play the game .. then maybe qualify your team for once .... höhö

lol, why should the austrian team ever play in a world cup? they play just as boring as your team, and are 10x worse at it

let's face it, austrians suck at sports. you should be discussing art and music instead.

you arent right

we pretty much suck at everything

I'd usually disagree but I guess you're more qualified to make that call.

you are Austrian.

Your opinion about football is invalid.

http://www.world-football-legends.co.uk/faraut90.php

Germany is playing the best football in this world cup. And the fact that it's me saying it adds extra value ;)

This was a demonstration.
Humiliation.
Best German team since 1990.

THIS, my friends, is how you play football.

Who's next?

Best counter-attacks I've seen for a long time :E

german football academies(36): EUR 30 mil
Lionel Messi: EUR 250 mil

makes sense.

Letting Ballack at home = free, and the best gift of all :)

Also: lmao@agu's football expertise.

Schweinsteiger > any of these so called "stars" (Messi, Kaka, Alonso, Ronaldo, Rooney, etc. etc.).

He plays so amazingly well, it's unbelievable.

Alonso? Spain's Alonso?

ofc.
Xavi would still be a little far-fetched, but he's def. better than Xabi Alonso.

Well, it surprised me. I had never thought about Alonso as a star. I'd pick 90% of the Spain national team before him.

Well, he's playing for Real. Which, in the media, is stardom by definition. :)

Anyway, Schweinsteiger > Spains MF .. ;)

No way ;)

But you're better as a team right now, I won't argue against that. :)

tschüss maradona!!!

<3 :)

\0/

calling germany-uruguay finals

yes please!

agentinia looked like they lost because they didnt play a modern style in witch every player is embeded in the dynamic of attack and defense.

messi , i adore him. but he and iguaine for instance didnt contribute anything for the game, they were only offensive forces with no other tasks.

i was happy to see agentinia showed better sportsmanship than in 2006 and well,,,,

id love to see our neighbours from netherlands in the finals!!

He had one midfielder playing, one.

yeah,,,,

i was actually confused at one point, when de micelis? had to shoot a 35 meter ball from the defense row to reach the other part of the team because inbetween was just emptyness.

didnt one of their good playmakers get hurt in the 2nd grp game or so? seems they missed him

Not really, his original plan was to play Mascherano and Veron but he decided he didn't need Veron and tried to use wingers as carillero's.

To Maradona's credit he found an alternative use for vuvuzelas:

http://i46.tinypic.com/9ldh4z.jpg

South american domination of this tournament, wow.

the more I think about it the unfunnier it gets. maybe the worst attempt at a joke I ever saw...

Title from Bild:

"Messi kriegt heut auf die Fressi"

nice.

Stop bashing Messi, he was easily the best Argentine player in the first, and a part of the second, half. He got quiet and disheartened towards the end, but you could say that about all of them. All Germany really did was take apart the shoddy Argentine defense. Everyone knows that was their weak point yet everyone seems so surprised a clearly superior, tactically, team, was able to take advantage of that. And even so, consider how much danger and pressure Argentina generated on the German's own half for LONG periods of time. IMO Germany must do something about that, one of the two coming opponents will not be so wasteful in possession or will adapt and force Germany to play forward and kill them with their own weapon (probably Netherlands or Uruguay).

Not taking away any credit, those counters were perfect, just like with England, but honestly, this result is more Maradona's tactical ineptitude than Germany doing some magic tricks. If it was Brazil, the Brazil from this tourney, i'm fairly sure the result would be much different. Now let's see if Spain draws any conclusions from this match.

And even so, consider how much danger and pressure Argentina generated on the German's own half for LONG periods of time.

It's absolutely impossible to dominate a team like Argentina for 90min, i'd say.
Long periods of pressure are ought to happen, if you have players like Messi, Higuain, Tevez.
Thing is, Germany allowed them zero chances. They were calm, cool and collected. Even Mertesacker, who was a bit shaky the last few weeks, played astonishing. Not to mention Friedrich and Schweinsteigers brilliant defensive play.

Seems to me the weakest part of the German defense is the goalie. The guy seemed to fall apart under pressure, lucky he didn't let any silly thing go past him. Otherwise i agree, it was an impressive display all around.

I was most impressed with Podolski backtracking and doing the job of a left-back. How the hell can this guy perform so poorly at club level?!

imo, because everyone expects him to be a leader at club level (at least in Cologne) and that doesn't fit his personality at all.

When playing in the national team others fill that role and he an just get on the field and play.

Disagree. It's weird tho .. before the England game, everyone was like: "okay, this time he'll have to prove himself."
He was very calm and did everything he had to do just right, nothing exceptional, 'cause he didn't need to.
Well, except that one shot by Gerrard. That was an incredible save.

Same thing for the Argentina game. His openings are superb, either thrown or kicked. He's calm, has an incredible overview of the game and again did everything he had to do.

I almost hope, that he get's a lot of shots on goal next time, so he can prove himself as w world class keeper.

Podolski, well. It's pretty obvious, that he's got a shitload of talent. His shots are always dangerous, as well as his passes.
I think he needs to have the best environment possible for him to reach his full potential. And that's the case with the german team. Everyone is 100% behind him.
Cologne on the other side is a club with pretty arrogant fans who think, that he should carry the team all by himself. They always expect that "Messi-Performance" from him.
Also the clubs politicians and managers fail pretty much every season.

I wouldn't invite Spain to have lots of shots on goal with Villa around, it's just asked to lose ;)

ikno. but that's exactly what i thought the last two games. Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Higuain, Messi, Tevez.
You would expect at least a few shots on goal, but friedrich, mertesacker, khedira and gottsteiger pretty much denied everything.

Higuain is an excellent striker but his finishing has nothing on Villa. But it's still somewhat impressive keeping out Argentina and not giving them any chances of note so perhaps they can do it again since Del Bosque seems to persevere with his zero-width policy.

I still think Mertesacker is an accident waiting to happen though, he turns like a fucking whale :EEE

Neuer ain't a bad goalie per se, i know he's fully capable of excellent saves, has good vision of the field and is a somewhat commanding presence in the box. But he doesn't inspire confidence by letting out the ball out of his hands like he did a few times in the Argentina game. It could have been just nerves, but with some bad luck, stuff like that can end up with letting one past him.

IMO Butt should have been the first choice. He still has some excellent saves in him, despite the age, and certainly has the experience and mental stamina not to let the stakes get to him and influence his performance.

hmm, yeah there were some cases where he should have caught it directly, which can be seen as a mistake for someone on his level.
But on the other hand, he also held some shots tight where I would have expected most goalies to deflect it. Like the shot in the 14th minute. And also one cross in the game vs. England.

And even so, consider how much danger and pressure Argentina generated on the German's own half for LONG periods of time.

It's called counter-attacking football, they invited Argentina to put more and more pressure on to break them down and then exploited the gaps perfectly.

Allowing Argentina possession was just the strategy employed by a non-possession orientated team who is in the lead.

Even when the game was "end to end" with Germany stretched and the English commentators were suggesting that favoured Argentina, they created nothing, despite all the attacking talent and it was in fact the Germans who creating chances (and eventually converted three more goals).

Maradona was clueless but even then, Argentina haven't looked like a force for years and clearly have gaps in positions that are vital in modern football (all strikers or half-strikers and all DMs won't win win you a world cup).

I'm aware of how those tactics work when rubbing together, i meant that even despite the iron German defense, Argentina really looked like they're this close to actually scoring. Compare that to Spain against Switzerland, or Paraguay. It's probably due to Germany actually not barricading themselves in trenches, more like leaving some space on their half to make it seem like it's possible for the opponent to make something of it, and then sprint forward after reclaiming possession. It's really a sight to behold, they do it very elegantly and efficiently.

It wouldn't have worked so well, though, if Argentina had an actual midfield. On more than one occasion i observed Germany rushing out, nearly unopposed, with 6 men for the counter. That's just ridiculous, if it wasn't for a surprisingly good display from Demichelis and a solid Mascherano, it would be more than 4 nil.

They didn't look like scoring shit at any stage of the game.

The problem with Argentina is they don't have any midfielders good enough, just more Mascherno clones or playmakers who don't want to defend.

I dunno man, i felt like they might have it towards the end of the first half, and for the first ten minutes of the second. I think it was during that period that Higuain managed to turn with the ball in the box and shoot on the near post twice, Messi played a delicious through ball to him but he fucked up, Di Maria stormed in from the wing a couple of times etc. Not real 110% chances, but something was going on.

pretty weak :) (well, as you can see from the smiley, it did make me laugh a little)