Scandal: Germany does not break the record

Nowadays, the media goes bonkers about the most irrelevant things. This time, it was Germany not breaking their centuries-old scoring record. 16:0 it was against Russia in 1912. Having beaten poor San Marino 13:0 in the away game, some journalists were focused on one thing only and so bugging the hell out of the team’s coach, Joachim Löw.

Since journalists love superlatives, they were sniffing a chance and already fabricated tons of headlines in their heads. “Germany trashes San Marino 22:0″ or so. Oh, and I forgot, they even played some football. Won 6:0 against San Marino in Nürnberg. The “late” lead was scored by Kuranyi, his header left the San Marinese goalie Simoncini clueless. Simoncini was the man of the match for me, but he can thank his comrades on the field that gave him roundabout 30 opportunities to shine. Basically, that 1:0 was the first taken chance out of a felt gazillion before. Schneider and Klose were as harmless as back in the day I started to dislike them.

German goalie Lehmann could be happy he was still on the pitch at that point of the game. He blundered on a pass at the right sideline, and could only deflect the ball to deny a San Marinesian lead, but Mertesacker was on the guard for him. Lehmann could have easily been red-carded because his hand play was out of the penalty box. And I don’t wanna know what might have happened during half-time when Germany would have gone into the break while being down 0:1 against SM. Germany might have won it in the end, but until then, the nationwide beer consumption would have quartered. It was Lehmanns first touch of the ball so far in that game.

Anyways, almost no journalist mentioned that the team lacked 9 players, including Ballack, Schweinsteiger, Podolski and Borowski. The season was long again and most of the players didn’t have any real vacations ever since the summer of 2005. Lahm, for instants, has played all of his clubs games this season, plus German Cup games, plus Champions League, plus EURO 2008 qualifyers. That all sums up to 55 games this season.

But, what did we learn out of this game? Germany’s B-Team is not overwhelmingy ready for the tough game against Slovakia, except for Gomez, Kuranyi and Hitzlsperger. Ballack will be missed and I have this odd itching in my goalie gloves that there will be work for Lehmann. I’d tend to say it’s gonna be a lucky draw for Germany. And by stating that, I include the hope the Mannschaft has fooled me as well as the journalists and the Slovaks…