Ok this will be my last post with respect to the Football world cup. The German team has been one of the surprise packages of this world cup. This is both in terms of their results and also their style of play. Not many including Germans expected a 3rd place finish. But for me their attractive style of play was a big surprise. Style and Flair were words you can hardly associate with German football. Efficiency, Industrious, Ruthless is what is German teams of the past are know for. I am not a big fan of their playing style earlier, but it has produced good results and you can always count on German teams to reach at least Semi-finals of any major tournament. Now this team is young is different. To start with nobody gave them chance to reach the Semi-finals. Without having seen them play, I was actually wishing that they get booted out in the first round along with Italy and France. Thankfully Italy and France deservedly got booted out and Germans were deservedly not. What happened in knockout stages was not something expected. They beat the over-hyped England 4-1 and favorite Argentina 4-0 and finally it took a strong Spain team to stop them. Though I was rooting for Spain from before the start of the tournament, I wouldn’t have been sad if Germany had played well that day and won the match. One thing I observed in this German team is that there were so many players from different ethnic backgrounds, something unheard of in past German teams. Klose, Podalski, Ozil, Sami Khadira, Boateng, Mario Gomez are not ethnic Germans. That makes me wonder may be this diversity in the team is the cause for the style and flair that is exhibited by this German team.
Looks like many people think this German team is different from earlier teams. An ESPN article says "Loew's 2010 World Cup side are the sexiest thing to come out of Germany since Claudia Schiffer became the supermodel face of Chanel”
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