Germany won a thrilling third/fourth place playoff against Uruguay. The Germans started strongly and it looked, for a while at least, as if they might run away with the game in a fashion similar to their destructions of England (4-1) and Argentina (4-0) prior to their upsetting loss to the Spaniards (0-1) who play the Dutch in tonight's final for top honours.
The Schwarz, Rot, Geld took the lead through a Thomas Mueller tap in after Bastian Schweinsteiger's long-range shot rebounded off the keeper and into his young teammate's path. The goal put Mueller on 5 goals for the tournament, tying the tallies of Villa and Sneijder who both play tomorrow. Should either fail to score in the final, the Golden boot will go to Mueller who leads the assists category, which acts as a tiebreaker in such situations.
But shortly after the beginging of what was looking like a routine German rout, Uruguay equalised. And shortly after the restart Diego Forlan brought his own goal tally to 5 by netting a superb volly, driven into the ground and lifting back up into the top corner to leave veteran German keeper Butt stranded.
With Uruguay leading 2-1 the game opened up and both teams found opportunites to score, but it was the German's who capitalised on some poor goalkeeping when Jenson headed in their second. What followed was a furious twenty minutes that somehow remained scoreless. And then, in the last ten minutes of the game, a botched clearance saw a Mesut Ozil corner sit-up for Khedira to nod in a soft, well-placed header for the winner.
Substitute Kiessling missed an absolute sitter than would have been one of the goals of the tournament (and won me £50 having bet on the German's to score four+) but it was not to be their fourth such goal accrual of this, a most magnifcent tournament for the German babes.
They now take home their bronze medals and dreams of glory in 2014. And who would bet against them? The team is solid and entirely based in the bundesliga; the adidas sponsorship of their domestic league means they will always get the World Cup ball before other nations; and in four years time, their whole team will be in the prime of their lives (except for the aging Arne Friedrich who will likely have hung up his boots by then).
Ballack will be srry to have missed out on Germany's run, but his presence may have subdued the livliness his young and eager teammates displayed in his absence. Germany's failure to win the World Cup for a fourth time may signal their longest wait for the cup to return home in the competitions history, but there is much to hearten die-hard fans. Patience is all that is required - their next big chance of silverware will be Euro 2012 and I doubt very much they will be found lacking the desire and cohesion to go all the way and play-out a probable rematch with the Spanish, who too are built to last.
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