Saturday, July 01, 2006
training yesterday was fairly ok. went out for dinner with the trackers at adam's road, then rushed home for the germany-argentina match. well, sad to say that the germans didnt play as well, but yea, every team will have a bad game sometime. but they got through, after much hard work...
the first half started off at a rather slow pace. both teams werent attacking much. argentina had much of the possession. germany couldn't get a good crack at goal, except once when ballack timed a perfect run to meet schneider's cross, only to head it wide.
the second half was where it got exciting. argentina gave germany a wake up call just minutes after the break with a goal that came from a corner kick.
and they really woke up after that. the germans pushed forward like mad. i could see the pace increasing quite a fair bit. it's like a 400m race and u got cut at the last 150m and u're summoning all ur adrenaline to chase that person back. the game was brought back to life again as germany, time and again tried to break the argentine defense. a couple of mistakes in the german defense almost saw argentina netting in their second goal. but the defenders manage to cover up their mistakes. and so the germans fought on hard.
argentina adopted a defensive play by subbing in some defenders. but that wasn't enough the stop germany's continual massacre. their effort paid off in the 80th minute when miroslav klose did what he had done best in the 2002 world cup - he used his head.
the score tied at 1-1 for the rest of the match. both teams were unable to break the deadlock. in the end, it was down to penalty kicks. i had always thought that penalty kicks were 90% about luck, until jens lehmann, the german goalkeeper, enlightened me. he read all 4 of argentina's shots perfectly, diving in the right direction for every one of them. i dont think luck has anything to do with it. he deserve the full credit for making those 2 saves and bringing victory to the germans.
aaron | 1:41 PM
