You must have the wrong game. Germanywas 1-1 against England and won the penalty shootout. They scored 5 regular goals in their 4 knockout games.
Never mind about the last post. I thought you were saying that Germany beat England 4-1 in 1990 when you were obviously referring to the latest game.
It’s all about the goals. Any restart from the centre spot should only be done after confirmation by video evidence in all cases where there is any contesting of the decision and the slightest doubt in the eyes of the officials.
missed the window of editing opportunity
ps. Adding a 5th official for cup competitions, tasked with watching what the cameras pick up, should cover all foreseeable goalmouth incidents.
But that wouldn’t have helped in England’s case, as the ball remained in play.
We saw how good Germany were on the break - let’s say the ball hits the bar and bounces on/behind the line - the German keeper gathers it then instantly heaves it up field where the English defence decide to ignore it and allow the German striker to stroll into the box and tuck it into the net.
The issue is at what point in that sequence should the video call have been made - there was no natural break in play, because the ball didn’t go dead, and it would penalise the Germans if we’d had a pause to review a shot that hadn’t crossed the line.
It’s different in rugby because it’s much less likely that a a defending team can move the ball from their own try-line to the other end in a single move - and a break in play is much more part of the game.
One option would be to have a video ref constantly monitoring the screen and feeding back to the ref… but that would mean each referee would make every decision with the chance that it could be challenged 20 secs later (which wouldn’t encourage firm decision making… they’d assume the video ref will pick up any calls).
I think having the extra goal-line refs are the best plan - seemed to work in the Europa League, and can be implemented at every level of the game without technology costs (which is one of Fifa’s main objections to video replays).
This counts. But it also shows how completely different the attitudes between the two sports are. Everybody involved got significant bans, and the coach involved was banned from practicing coaching for two years, IIRC.
I agree. Both goals came from counterattacks from deep within the German half. The disallowed goal basically fucked England. Germany were cracking at that point and their defence was all over the place.
Having said that, England have been fucking atrocious this World Cup. There’s simply no excuse for finishing second in that group. Wayne Rooney’s been missing all tournament, and by all accounts looks like he’s been on a pie diet since the end of the Premier League season. John Terry was abysmal yesterday, and the defence was a complete shambles. That isn’t bad coaching showing through: they’re four professional football players who surely know how to form a defensive line, but … didn’t.
Predictably, everybody seems to be turning on Capello, the manager. I think it’s some of the players who need to be examined a bit closer, to be honest, not the manager.
I can’t wait for the player accounts to come through in a couple of years time - I bet John Terry and Steven Gerrard in particular will have some strong words.
There’s got to be more to Rooney’s performance than meets the eye - maybe it’s just being a new dad, certainly wiped me out for the first few months!
I don’t think he went out there 100%, but because we didn’t have a Plan B, we had to send him there anyway because he was our talisman. I prefer to believe that, than he was at full fitness and just underperformed on his biggest stage ever, and got a strop on when he didn’t get the goal he felt he was entitled to because he is Wayne Rooney.
A player of his obvious talent doesn’t just turn shit for no reason.
We have shot 199 goals in 96 World Cup matches, slightly less than Brazil (205 goals in 95 matches); Holland, that almost everyone considers to be far more of an offensive threat, has scored 64 times in 39. I’d agree that the general perception doesn’t display the facts adequately.
I am not exactly jumping for joy either. I thought we might make the second place after the defeat against Serbia and avoid you a bit longer. Damn.
But I am looking forward to discuss with you the tactical situation and our respective strenghts and weaknesses. Oh, and if we should – against all odds – crush you totally and you don’t hear from me again, I was axed (literally) for cheering.
I think England played their best 30 minutes of this World Cup after the unexpected first goal and they rightfully evened the score but the odds were still in our favour:
England’s tactical formation remained woefully inadequate, so their individual weaknesses in defence were more accentuated than ours while their offence relied on individual class instead of team play.
Your team needed us to either start to crumble, as we did against Serbia after Podolski missed the penalty shot or to show as much nerves as we did against Ghana, when we made so many individual mistakes that we helped Ghana a lot to become a serious threat.
We, otoh, only needed to a) play our usual way to create numerous chances and b) avoid more lucky strikes by a disjointed but individually still dangerous attack.
Many of you already know zonalmarking’s excellent analyses of the World Cup matches and while he is overeager to praise Germany, his assessment of the tactical situation is, as usual, spot on.
So, I’ll just point to his post and add a couple of my observations:
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Manuel Neuer’s assist was no surprise at all for a German football fan; he is not just the last line in our defence but also the first in offence; his eye for the transition of the game towards attack is the main reason why the former Number 4 has become our new Number 1 after Robert Enke had killed himself and Rene Adler was injured. He is not as good a pure keeper as Tim Wiese is, but his style is too beneficial for our team’s strategy to opt for the more goal securing alternative.
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Schweinsteiger was thankfully all right; I doubt that he will still be one of the most underestimated players after the Cup.
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I have bitched about Löw a lot, but this time he has made two decisions that proved to be pure gold and deserve praise:
3a) in contrast to prior games, it was not Podolski who was allowed to roam freely from the wing towards the centre but Thomas Müller. Podolski had used his freedom to repeat the same move over and over again: penetrate with the ball from the left half-field towards the box or into it and shoot.
Müller, in contrast, used it threefold: a) he looked for opportunities to do what Podolski did but from the right, when no alternative presented itself, b) he positioned himself high between two defenders to either receive the ball or draw a defender towards him to create spaces for Klose, Özil or any other player who had a free position and was therefore able to engage in offence and c) he played the deadly pass himself.
Löw had given the far more intelligent player the necessary freedom to provide the team with another versatile option in offence and Müller did most of the things that I was hoping Toni Kroos would do if he were allowed to play.
Adding Kroos to Özil and Müller should in theory improve our offence’s interdependent positional play even more but I am starting to wonder if this might not indeed overcomplicate our movements? Are Podolski’s limited moves a needed constant in an otherwise free floating shape? I really have to think about this.
3b) Löw decided to use England’s problems in play-creation by allowing them the ball more than we usually do. This was a dangerous move since our defence is not as reliable as it should be but the continuously poor positioning of the English defence players gave us the anticipated opportunities for quick counter-strikes; a tactic that suits our offence perfectly.
If only he could show more insight into the situation at hand with his substitutions; Trochowski for Müller was perfectly understandable but adding Gomez and then Kießling remains a mystery. I do understand Kießling but he should have added Marin instead of Gomez to threaten the English team on the wing and open spaces in the middle for the penetrating Kießling.
It was unnecessary to take away willfully all the fluidity in our offence and substitute it with clumsiness instead of more counter-attack options. Oh, well .. no harm done. This time.
- Not everything was great. Our defence is still a liability, Mertesacker was less of a threat to us but still not a positive net result. Boateng is not yet as good as he plays in the league: the goal for England was partly his fault and he gave Milner far too much space.
And we are still not able to convert our advantages in positional play and passing in control over the field (in contrast to Spain or Brazil) and we are not as efficient and self-confident as Argentina. We also lack some of their individual class in a couple of positions.
All in all, the team has come closer to the best ones but is not there yet. And we never know if they don’t take another day off in their next match – a possibility that’s usually absent in German teams.
Arguably Michael Owen did just that - injury affected him, but he wasn’t the same after he left Liverpool.
The tactical situation looks grim for us, may be is the remains of my NoDieguismo speaking but you seem to have a better team, even if player by player we on paper are better, All we have left is trust in the “mystic” of Maradona and go ahead with faith that D10S is in our side.
If you get axed that would be no less than you deserve for stealing our natural resources in pure European colonialist fashion! 
My older daughter has anounced that she is going to disturb our fashion sense by painting herself black, red and gold but still wear a blue and white bikini, so I’d make sure that no one could ask her to take off the colours of the Albiceleste. Damn her devious colonist’s genes! [shake fist]
Tactically, we might indeed have an advantage: the shape we played against England wasn’t at all a standard 4-2-3-1 but a formation with two players who were allowed to go wherever they wanted to (Schweinsteiger, Özil), two with a lot of vertical freedom (Khedira and Lahm, though the last one didn’t use it at all) and two with triangular mobility (Klose and Müller).
While this is more advanced than Argentina’s shape, you play your system so well and with such great players that I still think you have the advantage (more later). And I wished Messi had already scored all the goals he could possibly make; I feel no desire to see him make up for missed opportunities.
If everything goes as it normally does, we’ll see a very close match with a lot of intensity and the occasional fist fight .. no, wait, Frings has stayed at home and Lahm couldn’t possibly challenge anyone to an affaire d’honneur except for Messi.
Um, no, I said. Might want to check the time stamp on my post again.
I don’t think he’s underestimated at all. He was rightfully credited as one of the stars of the last World Cup.
I’ll just say this: regardless of whether the Ungoal would have made a difference, England deserved to lose. Rooney has played like crap all tournament (and frankly hasn’t impressed me much in his previous international work), the back line looked shaky all tournament, and the midfielders have had no width at all.
The last part is absolutely mystifying - why everyone is camping on the edge of the D and trying to pass the ball through the middle of packs of defenders I don’t understand. It was noticeable against everyone else, but particularly pronounced against the Germans.
Oh, and Aaron Lennon should be a first team regular. Partly because he knows how to attack outside, but mostly just because his speed offers a threat that is pretty much absent from the rest of the team.
ahh… the infamous “Viveza Criolla”!
D10s quiera que se destape Messi!
I just hope that Maradona accepts it with dignity if we lose, it would be embarrassing if he makes an scene (and he can end up being stomped accidentally by some distracted German…)
I can never remember England being so helpless recently against the counterattack. Helpless against set pieces, sure; helpless in the penalty shootout, of course. But never in counterattack.
I think it would have been a different game if it had gone 2-2 to halftime. That’s not to say that England didn’t deserve to lose. But the post-halftime tactics would have been remarkably different on both sides. Maybe, just maybe, England wouldn’t have decided to throw the kitchen sink at Germany to try to score a goal, leaving them vulnerable in defense. I think the Ungoal, or whatever you want to call it, did make a difference. It seemed as if after halftime the offense was trying to make up for the ref’s mistake rather than play the game that led to Upton’s goal and Lampard’s “goal,” and that spelled their doom.
Lovely long through ball to Robben, who threads the Slovakian needle to put the Netherlands up 1-0.
In the game today I saw what seemed to be a flying or floating camera. Is that a balloon cam? Is it hanging on thin wires?
Cameras on wires are pretty common in American Football. Don’t know what they’re using here, though the inability to predict where the ball will be in 10 seconds would make it harder to know where to place the camera - can’t just stick it behind the QB and know the ball won’t hit it.
A couple of great chances for Slovakia. They’re unlucky not to be level.
Stekelenburg just showed why you can’t win a WC without a top keeper. Amazing consecutive saves.