Euro Wrap, June 19th: Germany 3-2 Portugal

Well the first quarterfinal did anything but disappoint.

I was a little bit worried that maybe the group stages would be all action and goals and the knockouts would be all cagey defending, 0-0 and spot kicks.

But 3-2 Germany, so five goals in the first game bodes well.

LiveBlog this-a-way, video of goals and report below.

QUARTER-FINAL 1	June 19th, 2045 CET, Basel (Switzerland)
Germany 3 VS Portugal 2 Schweinsteiger 22′ Klose 26′ Ballack 61′   Gomes 40′ Postiga 87′

First some text to read, then the goals. I won’t keep you long. Deal? OK then.

Credit to Portugal for keeping this game alive as a contest, but no arguing with Germany’s domination here. They were just too good for Portugal in too many areas. Especially in the air. There was an obvious height advantage (random sample: Deco vs Mertersacker) but Portugal still had big defenders like Pepe, so there’s no excuse for conceding two similar goals from set pieces.

Portugal, as usual, lacked a striker. Yes, Gomes scored and so did Postiga when he came on. But Portugal really need a big forward who’s capable of holding the ball up and giving the many many talents of Ronaldo, Deco et al someone to play off. Too many times the fancy footed midfielders approached the box with nothing to aim for.

As for Germany… even without Jogi Löw (banished to the stands) and Tosten Frings (broken rib) this was easily their best performance so far. As well as the set piece goals there was Schweinsteiger’s first, which came after some superslick superquick passing between Ballack and Podolski down the left.

And Ballack was everywhere today. Seriously. Get a look at his heat chart via euro2008statistics.com:

The man was all over the place today, and not in a headless chicken kind of way. He looked calm and composed and confident (and some other good c words, alliteration rules) when he was on the ball.

Enough text, time for goals:

Podolski’s one-two with Ballack down the left flank, before squaring for Schweini to slide home:

Petit’s foul gives Schweini the chance to cross in a free kick, and Miroslave Klose doesn’t need asking twice to head home his first goal of Euro 2008. The marking was sorry, wasn’t it?

Great great work from Deco who calmly and classily brings the ball down and out of defence and sets Simao away. Simao squares for C-Ron, whose shot is parried by Lehmann straight to Nuno Gomes.

Two questions about Ballack’s header. 1) What was Ricardo doing? 2) Did Ballack foul Ferreira?

Postiga heads home a Nani cross with full time approaching. This made the last few minutes a lot more interesting but Germany never looked in any danger.

For further discussion:

Celebrate with Angela, Jan and Nick on the Germany Euro 2008 Blog.

Commiserate with Greg on the Portugal Euro 2008 Blog.

Buy a Germany jersey here.

Buy a Portugal jersey here.

Fancy Germany to win the whole thing now? Or think they’ll fall in the semis? Back it up with a bet here.