I’ve said this before and now I’ll say it again louder: If there’s only one chance to score and the player fails to make good use of it and it ends up losing, of course the easiest way is to blame it on the player for wasting it BUT in fact it’s the trainer who should take the most of the responsibility cause obviously if you are counting solely on one big chance to turn the tides then you should probably ask yourself what’s wrong with the tactics and why it turns the team into such an uncreative circus that there’s only one decent chance in 90 mins.
During a 90 mins match a player makes countless different choices, like to whom the ball should be passed or where they should run, or whether they should tackle or simply block the pass. The thing is, not all of these decisions are the best ones. They make terrible choices and this can’t be avoided cause they are just human. But a well-considered tactic can help make up for it. We know beforehand that one attempt to shoot might not be enough for us to secure a 1-0 lead but a good-planning will create maybe 10 or so chances and one or two of them might end up being a goal. That’s how we win, by continuously making attempts, not by counting on good luck or sheer miracles that’s only in fairy tales.
The problem with this German NT is that they are not creative enough and for most of the time they rely solely on one big chance to be the savior if it’s missed then they are doomed. You should know it’s often a horrible tactical error behind it when this happens. Manuel said in the interview that the attackers found it difficult to use the long pass they sent forward and that their diagonal pass didn’t work either. In a nutshell it couldn’t be clearer enough that the tactics didn’t work. The players couldn’t push forward and pose a threat to the Englanders and most of the 90 mins was wasted in meaningless controlling and ineffective pass. Jogi Löw should have made adjustments at the beginning of the second half but instead he just reacted very negatively and be like ‘Let’s see what’ll happen if we keep this formation till the very end’ and then the Englanders scored twice and Germany was eliminated.
Ironically, in the post-match interview Löw still acted as though the main problem was one missed chance when in fact it was his poorly planning that condemned the team to this predicament. Be honest the game against England was not that much different from the one against Hungary. We couldn’t create enough decent chances wasting our time in controlling the ball in our half which was in fact absolutely meaningless. But last time we were probably favored by good luck and Leon scored the equalizer at the very end and helped the team move forward into the knockout stage but this time we were not. You couldn’t count on sheer miracles again and again. However that’s exactly what Löw is doing.
