The Bundesliga season has only entered its third match day, but already the race for the Number 1 jersey in South Africa has heated up again. Timo Hildebrand has declared his intention to compete for a place in South Africa, despite Joachim Löw’s insistence that only Robert Enke, Tim Wiese, René Adler, and Manuel Neuer [...]

Summer is almost over and Germany returns to Asia – no wait far-eastern Europe according to UEFA.
The trip to Azerbaijan, further east in longitude than the UAE, is not yet another crazy promotion by the DFB. Germany plays a double-header against Azerbaijan for World Cup Qualifying 2010. Löw reportedly did not want to make any [...]

Often here on the Germany blog we sound cynical and pessimistic about the German national team, the players, and especially the Bundestrainer. So now for something completely different…

First off in a recent interview with Kicker, Löw complemented a trio of three promising young players: Marcel Schäfer, Marcell Jansen, and Andreas Beck. Löw admitted that these [...]

1. Following the 2-0 defeat, Wales coach John Toshack admitted “We couldn’t really get too many positives; only that the scoreline could have been bigger”. That was one and a half years ago, when Germany travelled to Wales for a Euro 2008 qualifier. This time around John Toshack’s worry wasn’t about a dominant German [...]

1. This was the best ever result for Liechtenstein against Germany. It was achieved by a Liechtenstein team missing five starting XI regulars, who were forced to work the weekend shift by their day job bosses – presumably. There were no reports of Liechtensteiners flooding the streets and mountains and partying all night long in [...]

Here are the lineups for the upcoming qualifiers.
Tor: René Adler (Bayer Leverkusen), Robert Enke (Hannover 96), Tim Wiese (Werder Bremen)
Abwehr: Andreas Beck (1899 Hoffenheim), Arne Friedrich (Hertha BSC), Andreas Hinkel (Celtic Glasgow), Philipp Lahm (FC Bayern), Per Mertesacker (Werder Bremen), Marcel Schäfer (Vfl Wolfsburg), Serdar Tasci (VfB Stuttgart), Heiko Westermann (FC Schalke 04)
Mittelfeld: Michael Ballack [...]

Germany’s top striker, Miroslav Klose, injured his right ankle this weekend playing for FC Bayern in the Bundesliga. He will almost certainly miss Germany’s next two World Cup qualifiers against Liechtenstein and Wales. How long Klose will be out is as of yet undetermined. The injury leaves Bayern with only one fit striker in Lukas [...]

Congratulations to Norway for a quick and aggressive game. Now where does that leave the German team? Today it left us 0-1 down in the last quarter and frustrated till the end. If this sort of form continues we will be looking at a playoff against France.

I really wonder what is going on [...]

Piotr Trochowski scored his first international goal to give Germany a deserved 1-0 win over Wales in this past week’s important WC 2010 qualifier. The goal broke through an otherwise compact Welsh defensive back-line consisting often at times of the entire Welsh team. Germany was frustrated to a number of long and ultimately wide attempts [...]

1. It was the proverbial game of two halves.
Germany played a great game in the first half, strung together some neat attacking moves, scored two great team goals and could have made things worse for Russia with a couple of other chances. It was a reminder of what the team is capable of. The second [...]