My point isn't that the Italians didn't play very well or play injured or anything. My point is that Italy has a system. They played their system. They had players fighting through injury, if you notice I never said anything bad about the Italian players. I thought they played great.

Germany HAD a system or a style that they abandoned once they got to the semi-final. Italy lets their midfield maestro have free reign in the middle of the field, which is smart but pretty easy to figure out. Germany used to let their midfield maestro let have free reign and pick apart passes but they changed right before the biggest game of the tournament.

I think you're quick to be sensitive about Italy because I didn't try to cut down any of their players, as a matter of fact I'm pulling for them in the final because they've looked great all tournament.

My point is that Jogi Loew fricked up moreso than Italy playing out of their skull. It's my opinion, my opinion is all I offer, that Jogi's wrong decisions had more to do with the outcome of the game than anything else.

I give one example, the inclusion of Toni Kroos. Kroos is a fine player and if you really want to get him in the squad there are ways to do so. However, Jogi plugged in Kroos as an attacking midfielder and kept Schweinsteiger and Khedira in at holding mid spots. Schweiny wasn't healthy, not even close. If you have that much faith in Kroos, put him in for Schweiny.

But he didn't. He put in Kroos in place of Reus/Muller. That changed up the way Germany played, big time. What that created was an unbalanced midfield. You had two guy who were trying to stay in the middle and Podolski staying really wide left. There was a gaping hole on the right side because neither Ozil or Kroos are wide players.

That forced Jerome Boateng to play very high up the field. There are two problems with that scenario:
1) That leaves your backline vulnerable, as you saw when Hummels kept having to shift out wide to pick up Cassano who found the big arse hole where Boateng should be.
2) Boateng isn't a very good crosser of the ball. The Italians figured that out very quickly and didn't even bother to go out to challenge him. Smart by Italy but not that hard to figure out.

That whole situation led to the middle of the field being overcrowded, which effectively killed Mesut Ozil's creativity. Mario Gomez wasn't going to work hard to find open spaces in the back. Jogi at least figured that out quick and took him off at halftime.

Jogi made the change at halftime to bring on Reus but he should have taken off Kroos or Schweinsteiger in order to do so. Germany played right into Italy's hands by trying to force everything up the middle of the field.

As far as your point with De Rossi, I never said he's not a good player. I said that Schweinsteiger was playing injured and not doing it well and a change should have probably been made.

Italy didn't have to work that hard to break down Germany, because the Germans did it to themselves. Italy took their chances well, all credit to them for doing so. I think that if Jogi wouldn't have messed up the tactics and the lineup, it would have been much harder to Italy to get into the scoring positions that they got in to.

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Posted by wm72

Brooklyn

Member since Mar 2010

7803 posts

Posted on 6/29/12 at 6:59 pm to hendersonshands

I appreciate your post and agree with pretty much everything you say.

quote:
I think you're quick to be sensitive about Italy

This is probably right but after the number of "Germany stacked, Italy fricked" posts I've read here along with lists of "top players" that include the entire German NT and reserves without even a mention of a De Rossi, Pirlo or Chiellini, for god's sake, it's not hard to see why.

I'm also not saying that's coming from you and, where it is, I usually take it as humorous banter. Even in yesterday's game thread, I was replying to that arrogant German polar bear and not you. Perhaps, I've read too many posts from people of his ilk.

I do agree completely about the tactical problems for Germany you outline. However, some of that is due to Italy having quality players that created those worries for Low.

Also agree that there's a lot of chance involved when teams are fairly evenly matched. For example, if Badstuber or Hummels had headed in the corner instead of Italy clearing it which led to the break where Montolivo found Balotelli then Prandelli would likely have been criticized for risking too much in not having two of Italy's only tall players defending but instead keeping all the attacking three deep for the counter.

My point is simply that the difference between Italy and Germany's talent in any best 11 they put out isn't so huge. The only gap comes when you consider that Germany have tons of talent right now at attacking wing/mid. However, all those players can't play at once and Italy has just as much quality through the midfield and defense.

It is a point that, when made it before yesterday's match, usually ended up being followed by ten of these