1. All is well that ends well. Well, at least the comprehensive and dominant victory over England added a glossy finish to Germany’s tournament performance. It was a team that had its’ flaws but discussing them is academic now. They won the tournament and you can’t one up that except for a few style points. It’s nothing to be concerned with for the future either, as this team will never play together again. A lot of players will be too old for the next tournament and Horst Hrubesch will go back to his U20 team, with Rainer Adrion taking over the U21 now.

2. Horst Hrubesch is part tactical genius and part lucky bastard. I have to give credit to Hrubesch for making all the right adjustments to the team’s tactics. Especially playing Hummels in front of the backline. He argued that he wanted to gain aerial dominance over England to counter their strength from set pieces, but Hummels did much more than heading away crosses and corners with his all around excellent defensive display. He also allowed Khedira to go forward, which really helped his game. Though, as far as Özil’s return to his natural midfield position is concerned, we probably have to thank Ashkan Dejagah for his second yellow, which partly forced this adjustment onto Hrubesch.

3. Mesut Özil is a midfielder. A great one at that already. Unfortunately he was as wasted up front in the previous matches as Theo Walcott was for England in the final. Walcott was showing touches of his great technical ability but always appeared to look for that final pass with nobody in the box to finish, and it was the same with Özil in the previous matches. Özil could have made a much stronger argument for player of the tournament, had he been allowed to run Germany’s midfield.

4. Sandro Wagner is a striker. One who hasn’t exactly taken the second division by storm at his club Duisburg. For about 80 minutes in the final he also appeared to prove why Hrubesch thought a great midfielder is a better target man than an average striker. But he made up for it in the ten minutes that followed by scoring two goals; a cool finish for the first one and a curled beauty for the second. As mentioned above, discussing the flaws of this team is a bit pointless now, but there was certainly potential for a less minimalistic approach in the earlier games.

5. Possession is overrated. Fans of Hertha Berlin or Chelsea know that already. For everyone else, this game was a good example how a team which had 12 minutes less time on the ball than England could still emerge as the better and more dominant team. I don’t know what the “territorial advantage” stat on the Sky Sports page is composed of, but it favored Germany with 56% to England’s 43%, while the possession stat was more or less the exact opposite. The same was true for the group stage game as well by the way. But that still means as much and as little as every other football stat of course. And that being said, possession is still something desirable. You can’t concede goals while you have the ball and you can look for ways to set one up on the other end. I’m confident that Adrion, with multiple times the time Hrubesch had, will form a team which isn’t sending speculative balls to the sidelines or the opposition’s players quite so often.

The youth level European Championship hat-trick is therefore complete: U17, U19 and U21 champions. Congratulations.

Offense wins games and defense wins championships goes the old footie adage. So far this U21 team is putting the assumption to the test. The team has no striker, at least not one of the quality Horst Hrubesch would dare to put into the starting Xi. The creative/attacking midfielders Hrubesch plays up top really mostly play like they are midfielders; Mesut Özil like he is a brilliant midfielder in the making and Ashkan Dejagah like he won’t make the step up to the senior side. But they aren’t strikers and they mostly try to work their way through the oppositions defense all on their own with nobody there to receive a potential pass. It’s telling that Özil’s main contribution were two assists in the game against Finland and not a single goal (plus some neat but ineffective footwork in most games). So, oddly enough all but one goal have been scored by defenders (Beck, Höwedes) or a defensive midfielder (Castro). Those same defenders and Manuel Neuer have also been responsible that Germany only conceded a single goal (from a corner) so far. Benedikt Höwedes and Jerome Boateng could probably be installed as the new centre back pairing for the senior side straight away and solve a lot of the problems Löw’s team has been having recently (where recently equals a time span of one and a half years admittedly). Manuel Neuer has used the tournament to make a strong case for the #1 spot in the senior side – or at least to be picked for the squad. Against Italy Neuer had “one of those games” where he single handedly kept Germany in the game with spectacular saves. Probably not quite up to his game against Porto in the Champions League but it was pretty good nonetheless. Andreas Beck has proven to be a solid full back and since there currently aren’t any decidedly better players in sight in time for 2010 he also increased his chances for the senior side. So far so encouraging.

The midfield has been a real let down though. Sami Khedira (out injured against Italy – so no blame there) hasn’t managed to really stabilize and run the midfield and all in all it’s way too disconnected and struggling to come up with a proper passing game. Way too much of the play is highly speculative with unnecessary back heel pass attempts and individual trickery instead of trying to build a game based and clean passes. Marko Marin also had a tournament to forget so far. I’m willing to cut the team some slack here though, or rather Horst Hrubesch. He only had a very small amount of time to train and work with the players. Usually coaches below the U21 take care of a team for two years before moving on to a new age group, while the U21 position is permament. And e.g. Hrubesch’s U19 (now U20) has played with a proper build-up from the midfield. I think this team could do much better given a bit more time. In my preview post I already mentioned why Hrubesch decided against promoting a proper striker or additional midfield reinforcements from the U20 side. But the situation with two midfielders up front is simply an unsatisfactory solution and I feel Özil could have had an even better tournament, if he played on his natural position in midfield.

All in all, I hope that the team can somehow improve it’s game in time for the final, otherwise they’ll predictably made to chase the game again against England. That being said, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll lose the game, as this team has proven.

Should the team win this tournament it would be the first ever U21 Euro title for Germany and the first every title hattrick (U17, U19 and U21) by any country in Europe. Maybe some statisticians in Hrubesch’s squad can take that as extra motivation.

The final will be played on Monday 20.45h CET.

I am glad that he took the responsible way out, but it’s a shame for him because he has already turned Ghana down before. Ghana may not want him either now given his poor recent form. Anyway best of luck to him, but I hope his decision doesn’t affect his younger half-brother Jérôme Boateng (20 Berlin) who is having a great Germany U-21 experience.

In similar news Hamburger Abendblatt has quoted Dennis Aogo (22 Karlsruhe) as turning down offers to represent Nigeria despite the new FIFA regulations. He has stated that a switch is out of the question for him considering his potential future with the DFB.

So we are admittedly looking like glory hunting youth football bloggers, who only ever wake up every other major trophy won. To shake off that tag, I decided to write a post prior to a major tournament for a change. Since this is the U21 it also means that there are actually a couple of players on display, who might yet be a valuable addition to the senior side’s efforts to qualify for the World Cup in 2010.

The Road to Sweden
Germany topped its’ group on goal difference ahead of Israel and the team’s overall performances left quite a bit of room for improvements. Things didn’t look much different in the play-offs against France, where the team had Manuel Neuer and a late goal by Benedikt Höwedes in the second leg to thank for eventually securing a place in this year’s tournament.

The Coach
Dieter Eilts was looking after the team during qualification, but the DFB felt his coaching was not in line with the FA’s philosophy for youth football and generally, as you read above, the football wasn’t really that good. The DFB eventually secured the services of Rainer Adrion who had done an excellent job developing young players at Stuttgart and he will take over the next generation of U21 players starting on July 1. Until then U20 coach Horst Hrubesch has agreed to temporarily look after the U21 side as well and take them to the Euros. As a player Horst Hrubesch was a late bloomer and never played on any German Uxx youth teams and didn’t debut in the senior side until he was 29. He didn’t bloom too late though, as he won almost any trophy imaginable with his club Hamburg and also won the Euros in 1980 with Germany, scoring both goals in the final. As a youth coach with Germany he guided the U19 to a Euro title last year and will take them to the U20 World Cup this year.

Horst Hrubesch is also a bestselling author and if you are into fishing you really shouldn’t miss out on his book about codfish: Dorschangeln vom Boot und an den Küsten.

The Tournament Favorites
Are either Italy or Spain, depending on which betting site Google sends you to, with England a close third. Germany and Serbia are outside bets and everyone else is apparently not worth caring about.

The Group Stage
Germany have been drawn into group B together with Spain, England and Finland. They’ll face Spain tonight (20.45h CET), followed by Finland (18.06.09 18.10h CET) and England (22.06.09 20.45h CET). Should the experts be right, the team will then have finished third in the group and travel back home for some well deserved holidays while we are left contemplating who could be a serious candidate for Jogi Löw’s senior squad.

The Squad

G: Neuer (FC Schalke 04), Fromlowitz (Hannover 96), Sippel (1. FC Kaiserslautern)
D: Aogo, Boateng (Hamburger SV), Beck (1899 Hoffenheim), Boenisch (Werder Bremen), Höwedes (FC Schalke 04), Hummels, Schmelzer (Borussia Dortmund), Schwaab (SC Freiburg)
M: Adlung (VfL Wolfsburg), Ben-Hatira (MSV Duisburg), Castro (Bayer Leverkusen), Ebert (Hertha BSC), Grote (VfL Bochum), Johnson (1860 München), Khedira (VfB Stuttgart), Özil (Werder Bremen)
A: Dejagah (VfL Wolfsburg), Ede (MSV Duisburg), Marin (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Wagner (MSV Duisburg)

Hrubesch might have agreed to temporarily coach the U21s but he wasn’t willing to share any of his own boys with the team as he decided not to promote any of his U19 title winning U20 players. And since there is a U20 World Cup coming up later this year it’s probably understandable. But you could have constructed a pretty mean midfield and more importantly this squad could have really used a decent striker. The fact that Hrubesch nominated two midfielders (Dejagah, Marin) as strikers tells the whole story. This position will certainly be the team’s achilles heel and all the danger needs to come from the midfield. Players who are most likely to be World Cup 2010 candidates are (wild guess): Neuer, Beck, Höwedes, Khedira, Özil and Marin. The surprise omissions were Alexander Baumjohann (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Baris Özbek (Galatasaray Istanbul) and Eugen Polanski (Getafe) while Kevin Boateng (Borussia Dortmund) is out injured.

Hrubesch didn’t have all that much time to coach the team and get to know the players. It’ll be interesting to see how well they will do tactically and what kind of team spirit he was able to inject.

U21 (vs Italy, 18.11.2008 in Osnabrück)
Goalkeepers: Florian Fromlowitz (Hannover 96), Manuel Neuer (Schalke), Tobias Sippel (1. FC Kaiserslautern)

Defenders: Andreas Beck (Hoffenheim), Jerome Boateng (Hamburger SV), Sebastian Boenisch (Werder Bremen), Niko Bungert (FSV Mainz 05), Benedikt Höwedes (Schalke), Daniel Schwaab (SC Freiburg)

Midfielders: Gonzalo Castro (Bayer Leverkusen), Toni Kroos (Bayern Munich), Marc Andre Kruska (Borussia Dortmund), Mesut Özil (Werder Bremen), Eugen Polanski (FC Getafe)

Forwards: Ashkan Dejagah (VfL Wolfsburg), Daniel Halfar (Arminia Bielefeld), Rouwen Hennings (FC St. Pauli), Aaron Hunt (Werder Bremen), Kevin Schindler (Hansa Rostock)

Senior (vs England, 19.11.2008 in Berlin)
Goalkeepers: Rene Adler (Bayer Leverkusen), Tim Wiese (Werder Bremen)

Defenders: Marvin Compper (Hoffenheim), Arne Friedrich (Hertha Berlin), Andreas Hinkel (Celtic), Per Mertesacker (Werder Bremen), Marcel Schaefer (Wolfsburg), Serdar Tasci (Stuttgart), Heiko Westermann (Schalke)

Midfielders: Thomas Hitzlsperger (Stuttgart), Jermaine Jones (Schalke), Marko Marin (Borussia Moenchengladbach), Simon Rolfes (Bayer Leverkusen), Bastian Schweinsteiger (Bayern Munich), Piotr Trochowski (Hamburger SV), Tobias Weis (Hoffenheim)

Forwards: Mario Gomez (Stuttgart), Patrick Helmes (Bayer Leverkusen), Miroslav Klose (Bayern Munich), Lukas Podolski (Bayern Munich)

Conclusions
You just can’t escape the all singing, dancing and scoring space monkeys from Hoffenheim at the moment. Jogi Löw decided to invite two Hoffenheim players to the senior squad and former Stuttgart player Andreas Beck now represents Hoffenheim on U21 level as well. I personally find the nomination of Weis and Compper quite premature though. Hoffenheim certainly have some interesting young players, but does that justify rushing them into the senior squad after they’ve just played one third of a Bundesliga season? Especially if you compare them with some established players from the U21 line up. Well, Löw definitely didn’t rush any Karlsruhe players into the team last winter, when Karlsruhe were the big surprise package… Though, maybe there is some kind of coordinated effort between the U21 and senior team going on. The U21 team will compete in the European Championships next year, so maybe they want to keep the team together. Both Weis and Compper are too old to play on U21 level.

Oh yes, and no Ballack (injured) and Frings (messy relationship with Löw) means more football and less gossip ahead of, during and after the game.

It won’t be the most glamorous glamour friendly between England and Germany I guess.