Ascona Diary: Just kickin’ it with Philipp Lahm

Following their quarter final victory over Portugal, the German national team had plenty of time on their hands, with almost a full week to prepare themselves for the semi-final clash against Turkey. Two days alone were wasted for a mini-holiday, with the DFB offering a variety of possible leisure time activities. Philipp Lahm reclaimed his status as the team’s best ping pong player, degrading Arne Friedrich to second best again, who in turn took one of the Yoga classes on offer to handle his frustration. Lahm wouldn’t stop at ping pong and went on to beat Thomas Hitzelsperger 7-5 in a tennis match. Lahm’s adventurous weekend was capped off with a helicopter ride after which he admitted to have felt a bit nauseous. The WAGs were also invited to the hotel, which according to Lahm meant that “the players could go to bed early – which is good.”

Suspicious minds could fear that the German team is in danger of entering tonight’s match with the wrong attitude again, after a similarly relaxed atmosphere had resulted in the upset against Croatia. At least publicly the players and coaches try to stress, that something like this won’t happen again. And if it wasn’t for all the injury reports coming in from the Turkish camp all the time, the German team would have probably been just too happy to hand the favourites tag over to Turkey, as it hasn’t really done any good to most teams in the tournament. Just in case, Jogi Löw and the team’s scout Urs Siegenthaler travelled to Basle on Saturday, to watch the Netherlands take on Russia in their quarter final. Maybe they had a hunch, they would see the finalist from the other side of the draw.

On the unnecessary distractions during a tournament news front, we learned that Per Mertesacker extended his contract with Werder Bremen until 2012, Lukas Podolski distanced himself yet a bit more from his current employee Bayern Munich and Michael Ballack criticised Mario Gomez and Bayern Munich for their pre-tournament/tournament flirt. Maybe the players should sign an agreement to postpone all club related matters until after the tournament.

Looking ahead to tonight’s game: all German players are fit and ready to play – even Torsten Frings, who could play with a special rip-protector. Turkey could have a few surprise names in their starting XI, as Urs Siegenthaler assumes that not necessarily all players, who are listed as doubtful won’t be able to play. We’ll see about that. Jogi Löw wouldn’t disclose whether Frings will return to the starting XI and whether he will stick to 4-2-3-1 or revert to his preferred 4-4-2 formation. That’s the football side of things. Germany’s and Turkey’s biggest selling newspapers have meanwhile agreed not to breed any bad blood ahead of the game, to make sure most of the Germans and Turks in Germany can enjoy the match peacefully. The “fan-mile” at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin has even been extended to be able to cope with an estimated – and for this tournament unprecedented – 500000 fans. I’d probably expect a few scuffles between drunk fans, but hopefully that’ll be it.