If ever there was a chance for England to get one over on long-time rivals Germany that chance came and went on Tuesday evening.
Surely spurred on by the drubbing they were given by Alexis Sanchez’s Chile side last Friday, Joachim Loew added further fuel to England’s fire in announcing that Manuel Neuer, Mesut Ozil and Phillip Lahm would not be taking part in what is probably the most hotly-anticipated friendly from a neutral perspective in recent memory as he would be experimenting with his side ahead of his final selection deadline for the next World Cup. An experimental squad, at Wembley, facing an England side desperate to bounce back – surely the circumstances don’t come much more inviting for England when playing Germany do they? The line-up will have invited England’s enthusiasm for the game too as Germany fielded a very defensive and somewhat inexperienced side.
Did Roy Hodgson’s men capitalise on this then, playing essentially what was maybe not even a Germany B side? Well, for 20 minutes or so, they had a typically England-esque go at it! Andros Townsend in particular spearheaded wave after wave of England assault on the Germany rear-guard, testing the pedestrian Per Mertesacker and somewhat lackadaisical goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller on a couple of occasions but the Germans absorbed the pressure well with Sven and Lars Bender dropping back to crowd out the penalty area. Whilst the Germans were doing an exceptional job defensively though, offensively in the opening exchanges they just weren’t at the races! Toni Kroos was the most disappointing early on as he let many passes go astray and allowed England to continue their search for the opening goal.
On the half hour mark though Germany kicked into another gear; employing counter-attacking tactics used so effectively by the likes of Germany’s Dortmund contingent on a regular basis, it was actually Marco Reus and Marcel Schmelzer – two of Dortmund’s best players – who sent Germany on their way to the lead. Having absorbed the best England had to offer up to that point, Schmelzer and Reus combined on the left hand side to give Germany their first real offensive foothold in the match and it was the fault of England’s star man up to then, Andros Townsend, failing to track back that allowed Germany’s confidence to grow.
From that initial phase of play onwards, Germany looked much more comfortable offensively and pinged the ball around the edge of the final third with ease as Gotze, Kroos, Reus and Kruse found their passing range and led to Germany getting their first corner of the match. Capitalising on England’s inability to clear the ball, Germany won a second and third corner – not without forcing an exceptional save from point-blank range from the much improved Joe Hart but it was on the third corner that England came unstuck. A superb in-swinging delivery was met strongly by the towering Per Mertesacker who glanced his header past a hapless Joe Hart to give Germany a debatably deserved 1-0 lead going into half-time.
The second half saw the Germans control the tempo much more with Kroos and Gotze shaking off their earlier ineffectiveness to dominate the midfield game. Many pundits and fans highlighted that Kroos would be the key to this game – he certainly was – when he found his range midway through the first half Germany suddenly started clicking and he was key to that continued synergy in the German side in the second half which rightly won him the man of the match award. Gotze, Reus and substitutes Sidney Sam and Julian Draxler all went close for the Germans in the second half as England’s foothold in the game shrunk more and more as time went on before Rooney eventually came off, consigning Roy Hodgson’s men to a second straight home defeat for the first time since 1977.
It was a typical English performance from Roy Hodgson’s men – they had more of the ball in the opening exchanges but did nothing of any note with it before eventually running out of ideas and surrendering their advantage to their much more organised opponents. The score-line is slightly misleading; 1-0 sounds pretty close but in all honesty after about 60 minutes Germany had the game firmly under their control.
This game illustrates the enormity of the gulf in class between the top three or four sides in the world and England. Ozil, Gomez, Schweinsteiger, Gundogan, Khedira, Podolski and Lahm are just some of the names that didn’t feature but almost certainly would have done had they been available and then what would the score-line have been? Despite the buzz a few weeks ago about the fact that England had qualified for Rio, make no mistake about it – this England side are going to be in trouble come June if they don’t sort themselves out.
You can check out the draw for the group stages of the World Cup on the 6th of December; England are unseeded for the draw and could face a very tough route to the knockout rounds.