Decisions. Decisions. Lot's of Little Indians...
Löw has spoken. Neuer is his #1, as to be expected.
Wiese has the sadz.
Köpke claimed it was only between him and Wiese, so thank god that Butt was ruled out earlier. That would have been really cruel. But I am sure they were considering him...
And Lahm is "capitano" ---- Well, with this ramshackle team of ours, it won't matter that much anyway. I don't like Lahm for reasons outside the pitch, like his endorsement of BILD. Yet, as a player, he is flawless and I believe he will pull off the job decently. Alas, it's not Schweinsteiger.
Maybe Lahm will eventually get to play the six... Then he would be in the centre of things, as a good capitano needs to be.... Hmmmm. Maybe Löw might have that in mind.
I found an interesting quote from Löw/press conference.
Löw: "Wir können verschiedene Systeme spielen. Das ist sehr wichtig. Und: Ich möchte im Mittelfeld spielstarke Leute und nicht nur einen Abräumer vor der Abwehr. Dabei sollen die Spieler variabel agieren. Schweinsteiger und Khedira zum Beispiel sollen flexibel sein."
He says, they can play various systems, but he wants his midfield to be able to play forward, to play, rather than to destroy, - so I am reading this as a) giving old-school Frings the boot one last time
b) turning the blatantly obvious negative into a positive, nice move, btw. That is: not having adequate players at hand who show the necessary experience or whose roles would be clearly defined, as was the case between Balle (off) and Frings (def), he wants both players now to act flexible in both ways, with an emphasis on initiating the game rather than a defensive interpretation of their position only. Having the cake and eat it too. Alright, that is how "modern" play is defined these days - taken straight out of the manual. It is legitimate, still, one needs adequate players for it. And here comes the problem. The two players he is left with, Khedira and Schwein, are both not defensive by nature and Khedira is not experienced enough generally to shoulder that much responsibility.
Taken together, this clearly creates an (all too easy) weak spot for attacks by the opposing team. So we might win a game where we get to play aggressively forward and succeed - but we won't last long against squads that are better on all levels, like Spain, Argentine, we know that, but more importantly, we will also loose against squads that know how to make use of our midfield weakness and use it as an entrance to crack our defense line...
Even fooling around with the line-up is a bit hazardous and needs good preparation. I am not saying it is impossible... But it is getting less likely to make it to the quarterfinals.
And one last remark, it seems like that communicative skills are being valued highly these days. Löw specifically stressed that during press conference and it has been used subtlely as an argument against Wiese. I won't dwell on this now, might add a few thoughts later to this phenomenon. Bottom line: Frings and Wiese would have needed to change their skills a bit to appear 'modern" - less loudspeakerish and more reserved.
Löw's selection for the World Cup marks a paradigm shift for how modern players ought to be, according to him. Not only age-wise - 25.28 years is the average of our team! More so, players' roles have changed tremendeously. A new type seems to be in demand/ in the making and Löw, as well as Sammer, are pulling the strings in creating/molding them. Frings, as well as Wiese, did not fit into that mold, respectively they did not want to fit into it, as, to a certain extent, Ballack did not fit in anymore. He was called on a couple times.
The aggressive alpha-male leader type clearly is passe - a more communicative soft-spoken leader in a flat, democratic hierarchy seems to be the new favorite for now. Times are changing, but do we?
EDIT: Here's a current pic embodying the new flat-hierarchy. They are watching "Invictus" and not some alpha-male action-shooter crap Rost and his buddies would have watched :)
And some popcorn. Merte looking a bit tense here...
They might as well have fielded the entire U21 team. Could have been so much easier: No need to painstakingly observe an endless plethora of boring BuLi games and unruly players over two long years...
Question. Do we like Löw's mold of a socially concerned, less ego-centered, communicative, well-adjusted and self-controlled "modern" player who has his emotions in check, or not?
Or are we going to endlessly bemoan the end of an era in which we grew up in,- where we somehow grew fond of a certain grumpy leader type?
Wiese has the sadz.
Köpke claimed it was only between him and Wiese, so thank god that Butt was ruled out earlier. That would have been really cruel. But I am sure they were considering him...
And Lahm is "capitano" ---- Well, with this ramshackle team of ours, it won't matter that much anyway. I don't like Lahm for reasons outside the pitch, like his endorsement of BILD. Yet, as a player, he is flawless and I believe he will pull off the job decently. Alas, it's not Schweinsteiger.
Maybe Lahm will eventually get to play the six... Then he would be in the centre of things, as a good capitano needs to be.... Hmmmm. Maybe Löw might have that in mind.
I found an interesting quote from Löw/press conference.
Löw: "Wir können verschiedene Systeme spielen. Das ist sehr wichtig. Und: Ich möchte im Mittelfeld spielstarke Leute und nicht nur einen Abräumer vor der Abwehr. Dabei sollen die Spieler variabel agieren. Schweinsteiger und Khedira zum Beispiel sollen flexibel sein."
He says, they can play various systems, but he wants his midfield to be able to play forward, to play, rather than to destroy, - so I am reading this as a) giving old-school Frings the boot one last time
b) turning the blatantly obvious negative into a positive, nice move, btw. That is: not having adequate players at hand who show the necessary experience or whose roles would be clearly defined, as was the case between Balle (off) and Frings (def), he wants both players now to act flexible in both ways, with an emphasis on initiating the game rather than a defensive interpretation of their position only. Having the cake and eat it too. Alright, that is how "modern" play is defined these days - taken straight out of the manual. It is legitimate, still, one needs adequate players for it. And here comes the problem. The two players he is left with, Khedira and Schwein, are both not defensive by nature and Khedira is not experienced enough generally to shoulder that much responsibility.
Taken together, this clearly creates an (all too easy) weak spot for attacks by the opposing team. So we might win a game where we get to play aggressively forward and succeed - but we won't last long against squads that are better on all levels, like Spain, Argentine, we know that, but more importantly, we will also loose against squads that know how to make use of our midfield weakness and use it as an entrance to crack our defense line...
Even fooling around with the line-up is a bit hazardous and needs good preparation. I am not saying it is impossible... But it is getting less likely to make it to the quarterfinals.
And one last remark, it seems like that communicative skills are being valued highly these days. Löw specifically stressed that during press conference and it has been used subtlely as an argument against Wiese. I won't dwell on this now, might add a few thoughts later to this phenomenon. Bottom line: Frings and Wiese would have needed to change their skills a bit to appear 'modern" - less loudspeakerish and more reserved.
Löw's selection for the World Cup marks a paradigm shift for how modern players ought to be, according to him. Not only age-wise - 25.28 years is the average of our team! More so, players' roles have changed tremendeously. A new type seems to be in demand/ in the making and Löw, as well as Sammer, are pulling the strings in creating/molding them. Frings, as well as Wiese, did not fit into that mold, respectively they did not want to fit into it, as, to a certain extent, Ballack did not fit in anymore. He was called on a couple times.
The aggressive alpha-male leader type clearly is passe - a more communicative soft-spoken leader in a flat, democratic hierarchy seems to be the new favorite for now. Times are changing, but do we?
EDIT: Here's a current pic embodying the new flat-hierarchy. They are watching "Invictus" and not some alpha-male action-shooter crap Rost and his buddies would have watched :)
And some popcorn. Merte looking a bit tense here...
They might as well have fielded the entire U21 team. Could have been so much easier: No need to painstakingly observe an endless plethora of boring BuLi games and unruly players over two long years...
Question. Do we like Löw's mold of a socially concerned, less ego-centered, communicative, well-adjusted and self-controlled "modern" player who has his emotions in check, or not?
Or are we going to endlessly bemoan the end of an era in which we grew up in,- where we somehow grew fond of a certain grumpy leader type?