Old Hats and Young Blood: Klose’s big day, U-17 EQs, and more

March 24th, 2011 | by: Anne | Comments Off

Today is a special day for one of our living legends: it has been exactly 10 years to the day since Miroslav Klose scored his first goal for the German NT. On March 24, 2001, in his NT debut, Klose scored an 88^th minute winner against Albania. That goal proved not a false dawn but the advent of a national hero; to this day, he remains a crucial part of our squad and determined to carry the torch through 2012. The lack of a real successor is worrisome, but I’ll be glad as long as we’ve got Miro suiting up for us.

The team arrived in Mainz earlier this week and has been training at the Arena Wiesbaden. There is no injury news to report except René Adler, who pulled from the squad after suffering a muscle injury, so we’ll be at full strength this Saturday, barring any last-minute training injuries. The gathering has been relatively sedate this time around, so no mohawked Poldi to share with you, but there has been one silly video with some of the guys shooting a commercial for Sony. Interestingly, Mats Hummels is included in the fun – I probably shouldn’t read too much into it, and perhaps it’s only that Hummels has an (extremely) marketable face, but this suggests that perhaps he truly is a permanent part of the squad now. Another compelling piece of evidence in this vein is that Hummels has been given #5 for these matches, a number that recently belonged to Heiko Westermann – could this be a changing of the guard? We may see Hummels as a starter yet, which I would view as a very positive thing.. Let’s wait and see. If you want to see more videos of the guys training and discussing the upcoming matches, several have been uploaded to the team website.

The Germany U-17s beat Turkey 2-0 in a EURO Elite Round match.

Turning away from the seniors for a moment, the German youth teams are also in action during this international break. Most excitingly, the U-17s have three EURO matches in the Elite round. They emerged comfortably from the Qualification round with a perfect record of 3 victories and a GD of +11, and now have been drawn against Turkey, Switzerland and Ukraine. The U-17s got the round off to a bright start today by beating Turkey 2-0, with goals from Samed Yesil and Levent Aycicek. They have their games against Ukraine and Switzerland on Saturday the 26^th and Tuesday the 29^th, respectively. Hopefully it’ll be a comfortable qualification for the finals for our young ones.

The U-18s, U-19s and U-20s are also in action, but only in friendlies. The U-18s had a double header against France, the first of which they won on Tuesday, 3-2 with two last minute goals, and the second of which they lost 1-2 this afternoon. The U-19s have matches against Belgium and Ukraine on the 25^th and 29^th. The U-19 squad notably includes Alexander Merkel, currently making something of a mark in the first team at AC Milan. The U-20s today played out a 1-1 draw against Poland. Nothing earth-shattering, but good to keep an eye on.

Don’t forget as well that the U-21s also have two friendlies against the Netherlands and Italy on Friday and Tuesday, respectively. The squad will be missing some familiar names – Felix Kroos is out due to groin strain, while Christian Clemens and Konstantin Rausch have been pulled due to illness.

That’s it for now!