Definition: Meaningful Friendly (England 1 – Germany 2)

By: Jan | August 22nd, 2007

mean·ing·ful (mē´nĭng-fðl) friend·ly (frĕnd´lē)

Germany

First team to beat England at the new Wembley stadium
Despite fielding a B-squad

England

Losing for the first time at the new Wembley stadium
Against Germany
Having no excuses, since Germany had the more impressive injury list

Ok, that’s artificially propping up the match with the benefit of hindsight. In reality it will probably end up as an interesting statistical footnote in the football history between the two countries. And a draw would have been the more adequate result, since England had plenty of opportunities to equalise. But then again, it always feels good to win, and doing so at such a sacred ground of English football doesn’t hurt either. After the first 20 minutes of the match, I had feared this could turn out to be a complete disaster for Germany again though. England dominated the match and forced their guests to stay in their own half with ease. But to quote Andy Kaufman who quoted Elvis: There’s no job too immense when you’ve got confidence. Which Germany got enough to find their way into the game, after Robinson’s gifted equaliser. I could bemoan all the bad passes, that cost us lots of possession, and toothless counter attacks, but this team will probably never play together again in this configuration, so why care.

I’m not sure we learned a lot about some of the fresh German talent that was on show. Some confirmed their good performances on club level like Schalke’s Pander and Stuttgart’s Hilbert, but that’s about it. The biggest surprise for me was Phillip Lahm, who isn’t just a versatile left and right-back, but can also play a good role as defensive midfielder. Oh, and Lehmann is still a slight liability at the moment, partly gifting England their first goal, but the hosts were kind enough to return the favour.

On a side note: I would prefer if the UEFA, or whoever is responsible for this, does away with some opera singer or popstarlet singing the national anthems. I really enjoyed how it was handled during the World Cup, with just the music and the fans providing the lyrics.

Something else that appeared to be a bit odd was the noise in the stadium. I was mostly hearing the German fans making noise and singing along. But that might have been due to German TV setting up their microphones near the German supporters.

P.S.: Some video highlights are available here.