THE BUBBLE had well and truly burst on Germany’s dreams back at home yesterday, where the media was busy analysing just what had gone wrong and “Paul”, the “psychic” octopus from Oberhausen had apparently received death threats after jumping ship and preserving his 100 per cent success rate in the predictions stakes on Wednesday.
Joachim Loew has been endeavouring to look forward himself, insisting he foresees great things for the new generation of players with which he peppered his team at this tournament and, on the evidence of the last few weeks, it’s not hard to understand his optimism.
Against Australia, England and Argentina, players like Mesut Ozil, Thomas Mueller and Sami Khedira helped sweep their team to victory.
The managers of Turkey, Austria and Belgium, who the Germans are due to take on for a place at the European Championships in two years’ time, will have watched uncomfortably at the way Loew’s men fearlessly dismantled opponents who were, at the very least, expected to make life a little tougher for them.
Still, the eagerness of his critics to write off Michael Ballack looks rash in the wake of Wednesday’s defeat by Spain at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban.
There has been much talk about how Bastian Schweinsteiger had flourished in the defensive midfield role and Khedira, along side him, had added pace and more urgency to the attack.
But the coach’s admission afterwards that his young side struggled to get the ball from Spain in midfield and, more critically, couldn’t hold on to it when they had it, was all but an admission that the absence of more experienced campaigners in the centre of the field had been a major contributory factor to his side’s downfall.
Given his age, Chelsea’s decision to release Ballack, who will be back home with Bayer Leverkusen next season, was no great surprise but his contribution to the London club’s latest title-winning campaign was still underestimated by many. He may not have played precisely the role intended for him when he arrived at Stamford Bridge four years ago but with Michael Essien sidelined for most of the season just finished, he looked comfortably the team’s best option for that holding midfield role.
The 33-year-old’s ability to break up the play of opposing teams, win possession and then start the process of nudging his own team-mates forward remained masterful at times. And while Schweinsteiger’s strength now matches that of his long-time international colleague and his speed easily outstrips that of the older man, it became apparent against the Spanish he simply didn’t have the presence required to carry the entire midfield show.
Against a team as inept at retaining possession in midfield as England, Khedira looked great but Ballack and Schweinsteiger would have represented a far greater challenge for Xavi and co.
The Bayern Munich man certainly seems confident that Ballack will be back at some stage. “He’ll definitely return to the team. He’s obviously a player who is very important for us. It’s my view that he can still help us.”
The challenge now for Loew, or whoever succeeds him is to manage the emergence of these new players and, most likely, to integrate another couple of the outstanding under-21 European Championship winning side while gradually dispensing with the older generation.
Mueller, in particular, may have excelled over the past few weeks but we’ll never know if he would have made a difference had he been available for the semi-final. What we do know, however, is that his fellow 20-year-old Toni Kroos showed his inexperience when squandering Germany’s best chance of an equaliser.
The Germans could do with the left-sided midfielder as well as Miroslav Klose and central defender Arne Friedrich rediscovering their best form at club level but there seems little doubt that by the time the next World Cup comes around the latter two will have departed.
The bulk of the current squad, though, is well under 30, and so the likes of Philipp Lahm, Per Mertesacker and Schweinsteiger have the potential to provide the backbone of a hugely successful team with far greater responsibility falling on the younger generation who should be much better equipped to shoulder it.
“It is,” as Klose observes, “a very young team and a very talented one and the future belongs to them.”
With the Golden Boot still up for grabs the veteran striker may yet keep a younger man on the bench in Saturday’s play-off but as the process of building for the 2014 begins in earnest, there really may be no stopping the new generation. Wednesday was a reminder, though, that they are far from the finished article yet.
