UEFA Euro 2012 Preview: Germany

Germany caught off the guard the world of soccer in 2010 when they played an attractive football and after dispatch both England and Argentina with 4 goals apiece, only the eventual future Champions Spain stopped the well oiled German machine. In the qualify stage for Euro 2012, Germany won all their 10 games by scoring 34 goals while allowing just 7 goals. Nevertheless, this is a pretty young team,with an average age of just 24.9 years. This is in fact the youngest Germany squad since way back in 1934 and if in WC 2010, there wasn’t high expectations for the team, for this competition we are talking about the main favorite to dethrone the actual Champions Spain so the “pressure to win” will be a important factor that Germany will have to battle.

National Head Coach Joachim Low is the main responsible for this attractive style that German plays. Their offensive principles are quite simple by using one or two touches and a lot of movement off the ball. Being young and athletic is a good thing and the German team is an explosive physical team with an incredible stamina and work rate. Even though that they haven’t (aside from Özil) any “big names” in their roster, Germany have a role of underrated young players that most likely will explode in the near future - Reus, Götze or Kroos are a good example of such players!


Strenght(s):

• Depth: few teams have such a balanced roster as the German side and there won’t have any ego problems internally because Joachim Low is a great leader; 
• Stamina: Germany brings to the field a high motor machine that is hard to stop, they play an exciting up and under game that few teams will be able to match, eventually they will counter early on the game, but they will ran out of gas later! 
• Pressing: when compared to the WC2010 version, this German team puts more pressure, forcing the opposition defense into poor passes and winning the ball in the opposition half. “We are no longer focused on the fast transition from defense to attack,” says Philipp Lahm. “We are playing less on the counter. We now have players who are so good that we can dominate the game against any opposition.”

Weakness(es):

• Pressure: any less than a win for Germany will be a disappointment for them and by being such a young team this can work against them in this tournament; 
• Defense: they have a great goalkeeper in Neuer but the back four aren’t at the same level of the rest of the team. Note that Lahm is the only world class player of the unit and he is actually the team’s best left and right back, but obviously he can only play in one side. It can be a good thing if Lahm, Boateng and Badstuber start together because they all play in the same club (Bayern Munchen), so they have an build chemistry, but I still don’t think that Mertesacker and Badstuber are the best defensive center duo…far from it!