Despite all the successes at the senior level, the German juniors failed to win football championships time and again; at long last, this has changed: earlier this year, the Under-17 and Under-19 juniors have already won European championships, now the U19 has completed the triple on the junior level against the English team with a nice 4:0 win.
Portugal’s Golden Generation has already shown that successes at the junior level don’t necessarily lead to titles won by the senior teams but the once shady prospects have turned tempting by now.
Congrats to the Germans! Even better that they did it against the English. Sort of a tradition, as I understand it.
Oh yes, it’s one of the more spirited and entertaining rivalries in football. Every German kid, who ever touched a football, is likely to know about the third goal in the 1966 World Cup Final, the so called Wembley Goal (Wembley Tor).
And I guess, the English side has its say when you start talking about penalty shoot-outs – though the English coach, Stuart Pierce, who was one of the unfortunate players to miss a crucial penaltyin his career, managed to lead his team to a win in such a situation during the semi-finals against Sweden – a bit unexpected but hard-earned and well deserved.
I hadn’t expected this German team to win the third European championship this year without a decent forward line – our internationally competitive forwards are either too young or a little bit too old for the U21; but, once again, we have seen the old saying come true that defense wins championships.
I should have read my posts more carefully. Two minor points need to be corrected:
[ul]
[li]I wrote Stuart Pierce, it’s Stuart Pearce, of course. :o[/li][li]The U19 won their European championship the previous year.[/li][/ul]
Yeah, nothing major, but I don’t want to spread faulty information.