They have patience.
Germany play machine-football with a lot of patience.
Their 2-1 victory over Denmark was revealing, especially in how and when the winning goal came about.
It was 1-1 for 55 minutes.
Denmark v Germany was 0-1 after 19 (Podolski) and it was 1-1 after 25 (Krohn-Delhi) and then there was no further goal until the 80th minute.
55 minutes is quite a long time to be level, even in a Group match.
It was interesting to watch how the Germans controlled the game but didn\’t rush it.
Second half, it was mostly keep-ball by an accomplished team who were being careful, waiting, believing that they had plenty of time to score a goal and also believing that they would not concede.
They waited until a potentially decisive moment presented itself.
What happened was this : Denmark attacked down the left side, right back Lars Bender, a sub with legs and really a midfielder, passed forward to Klose, who knocked it off to Khedira, who carried the ball to the centre circle as Ozil made a typical diagonal run, then passed nicely forward to his mate.
Indeed, the ball rolled to a halt so invitingly that Ozil, having raced down that avenue, had time to run round the ball and play it first time, forward and across the penalty area towards Klose.
When Klose slipped, the ball rolled on into the stride of Bender (remember him?) and Bender side-footed past keeper Andersen.
So it finished: Denmark 1 Germany 2.
CONCLUSION : Ozil is not a conventional playmaker like Overath, not a dribbling winger like Littbarski.
He ‘s a geometry king, an aristocrat of angles who uses his football brain to maximize the damage his pace can do by making runs to places that disconnect your back four.
Ozil uses his assets in a very distinctive way to give Germany something they can\’t get from anybody else.
At Real Madrid, he creates fast diagonals and joins in fast diagonals, and, like Benzema, Ozil works to play Cristiano Ronaldo into scoring positions.
That makes sense.
If you have a superathletic two-footed gladiator who can also head the ball, you use him as much as possible, and keep giving him the ball in dangerous areas, which can be deep areas, since Cristiano Ronaldo is football\’s most turbo-charged counter-attacker.
In four games, Ronaldo has already had 30 shots or headers, far more than any other player in this tournament.
Portugal coach Paulo Bento is trying to find ways to use Ronaldo as efficiently as Jose Mourinho does.
That\’s not easy without Ozil , but Nani helps a lot. I love Nani and could watch him all day and all night.
I wrote most of this piece on Monday and an hour ago I saw The Guardian headline: Germany embrace game of sprints for maximum effect.
Joachim Low says it’s easier to sprint forward than back.
Low says,”If you are going forward, you forget how much you have run and how fast you have gone. It doesn’t hurt as much to sprint forwards.”
This from an informed ANR reader
Hi Myles,
Greetings from Berlin, and thanks for your excellent EM coverage, which I am reading daily.
Just to respond to your statement: ”He’s Kurdish rather than Turkish, according to two readers who wrote to me in 2010.”
Özil is German! He is 100% German.
He was born in Germany, and he grew up here.
The rumour he is Kurdish derives from confused Turkish nationalism, upset that he chose to play for Germany, and not for Turkey, where his parents came from (specifically, they came from Zonguldak, near to the Black Sea)
En içten dileklerimle,
Daniel Miller