5 Conclusions: Germany U21 4-0 England U21

June 30th, 2009 | by: Jan | Comments(4)

Before wrapping up the whole tournament again, factoring in the final as Nick suggested in the comments, it’s time for me to collect a few more thoughts on the final itself. Feel free to share your own analysis in the comments.

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.