Semi Final Preview: Spain vs Germany

Spain

How they got here

The loss to Switzerland brought back all the old Spanish doubts

With a lot more difficulty than expected. Nobody expected them to lose their first game to Switzerland. That 1-0 loss was the only time the Swiss managed to get themselves on the scoresheet, as their desperately negative tactics yielded just one more point against Honduras and Chile.

The pre-tournament favourites recovered well from that defeat, with a comfortable 2-0 win over Honduras and a 2-1 victory over the dangerous Chileans, but their reward was another meeting with a well-drilled, defensive outfit, Portugal.

Despite some hairy moments in that one which raised more doubts over the form of legendary goalkeeper Iker Casillas, David Villa’s fourth goal of the World Cup was enough to see them through. His fifth was all they could muster in an unexpectedly tense 1-0 win over Paraguay. They won’t care how they got to this stage though, the point is that they are here.

Final prospects

They go into this one as underdogs, which would have been unthinkable three weeks ago. The fickle nature of football coverage dictates that the Germans are now the form team, and will be expected to continue their free-scoring ways.

It won’t be that simple.

First of all, in a bizarre way, the shackles are now off Vicente del Bosque’s men. Always the nearly men of World football, they had come into many World Cups before this one as the heavily fancied dark horses, and had always come a cropper early. For a nation with such a rich footballing tradition and so many star players over the years, they had always flattered to deceive.