Iam impressed with Germany and their revolution

Yes, everything happened in 2006, when Germany had a wonderful "Summer Story", how the Germans called it. But we cannot forget that in 2002 Germany played the final in that year's World Cup and Rudi Voller became an appreciated man in Germany. Then the 2004 European Championship came, where Germany was eliminated from the group stage and Voller had to go. Then Klinsmann came and he had disastrous results in the friendly games. He was called up in the German Parliament and then something happened. Germany played impressive football, but because the critics which he received before the tournament, Klinsmann decided to step back. Then came Jogi Loew, who was Klinsmann's assistant and Germany had two great final tournaments, playing the final in 2008 and the semifinal in 2010. Despite many others, I think that Germany would have won the World Cup if Ballack would have been there. He is not so technically skilled as Ozil or many other immigrants, but he is a great fighter, with real German spirit. Now, Germany plays spectacular football, but the fire is not there, the fire which was characteristic to them throughout the history. I do hope they will win the Euro 2012, but they need that German spirit again, which I doubt that exist in the immigrants.

I think German and Italian players generally play very well as a national team. I think the main reason is that these teams tend to pick more people who play in the domestic league. Klinsmann did start the revolution of picking in some of the new talents, but most of them played in Bundesliga and that helped gelling them together. I personally think that is the right way to go. Every country has a special formation and special key talents and it is better to nuture those in their own leagues. Unfortunately as money has more and more say, it is becoming very difficult for countries to keep their players playing in their own league. Cheers! Ram

I agree, germany is a young team with lots of talent and they have proven themselves in the big stage. It's good to see those youngsters coming through the ranks and it's only a matter of time before they finally win something. So far, in all the tournaments germany are involved, they have only got as far to the semis or finals, but never winning it. They might finally break the duck comes, euro 2012.