10 Conclusions: Wales 0-2 Germany

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 team putting more goals past Wales, because there was no such German team in sight. He saw a good Wales performance and a not so good one by “The referee produced decisions you would not see on Llandaff (Cardiff) playing fields in park football”.

Goes to show that Germany has came a long way since then – the wrong way unfortunately.

2. The referee was indeed bad – good for Germany, but still bad. It should have been throw in Wales before Ballack scored the first goal and Wales should have gotten a penalty when Tasci slipped up in the box and took down a Welsh player in the process. Thanks to the complexities of chaos theories and butterfly effects it’s still perfectly possibly that Germany would have won 2-0 anyway, in fact Gomez would have probably scored both goals. It could have been the other way round as well and those two calls helped brush over the fact that this team is just not what it used to be – but I’m repeating myself.

3. Lukas Podolski doesn’t like tactics. Or he doesn’t like it when Ballack lectures him about tactics. Whatever the case, his reaction was just the right thing to do to get some views and comments on YouTube and isn’t that what counts in the 2.0 era?
 

 
Apart from that it was obviously immatureshouldn’thavehowdarehe. What’s great about all of this for Jogi Löw is, that all the recent team internal rifts and argy bargy center around Michael Ballack and not his man/team management skills.

4. Jogi Löw needs a better backup system than 4-2-3-1 (or was it a Dutch 4-3-3 or a 4-1-2-1-2 or a 4-8-15-16-23-42? The verdict is still out.) In any case, it was a one trick pony at the Euros and not so cherished overall and I wasn’t impressed again either.

5. Mario Gomez could tell Daryl a thing or two about the merits of international weeks.

6. I wasn’t disappointed by Thomas Hitzelsperger’s performance this time around, because I needed all my disappointment for Simon Rolfes.

7. Arne Friedrich can chill and focus on Berlin. He was set to debut in Germany’s defense before his injury kept him out of the two games. A chance for Serdar Tasci to apply for the open position alongside Per Mertesacker. Rumor has it the job interview didn’t go so well.

8. There is such a thing as eternal justice for goalkeepers. Rene Adler seemed to have taken maximum advantage of Robert Enke’s injury and looked set to become Germany’s new #1. Now it was Robert Enke’s turn to take advantage of Adler’s injury. He pulled off two superb saves for the gallery and was overall very confident and in complete control of his box.

9. Ballack’s goal was a beauty. The fact that it wasn’t 100% legal and that Löw briefly picks his nose again in the build up just adds a further dimension of greatness to it.
 

 
10. Can’t think of a proper 10.