Germany: Back Down to Earth

I’m recovering well from Germany’s disappointing return to earth on Friday, thanks for all the cards and flowers.

Indeed, the pain of sport when your team goes from being the hot side in the tournament to just another team trying to get out of the group stage, all in the blink of an eye. To be honest, a huge boost has been simply due to the fact that I'm not a fan of England, France or Spain. Ouch. While the latter will likely pull through the group stage, that may put them directly in front of Brazil. But England and France’s chances of advancement are not completely in their direct control (England especially, wow, what a story here...Remember that great player Wayne Rooney, I wonder what happened to him? I would have thought he'd be playing for England at this World Cup)...

But back to Die Mannschaft’s game, I’m not buying all of the media’s credit to Serbia for the “shock” win -- they won because they’re a good team that played with a man advantage for most of the game. Despite that, Germany had 58% possession and 16 shots on goal compared to 10. Germany’s keeper, other than letting in the goal, did not have to make a single save. Clearly with some better finishing from Podolski and they could have easily tied or even won.

What kills me about that card-wielding ref (4 of 10 yellow cards in the first 20 minutes alone) is that had he remained consistent with his yellow cards, the odds would have favored that at some point Serbia would have also had someone sent off. Thus bringing game back into balance. But no, in the second half the ref tamed his cards and let play go on more normally. For Germany, the damage was done.

I know I'm not being a good sport here, but it's painful when bad officiating has such an affect on the game (see next post). What matters now is for Germany to finish top of the group – with a win against Ghana (who really hasn’t shown much, only two goals from PKs) they’ll achieve that.

And who knows, their Round of 16 opponents just might be Slovenia if England can’t improve.