Lessons from the Germany Brazil Game

So I sat down hoping for an exciting game.  Germany usually plays according to its national stereotype of being well planned and well organised.  Brazil has a reputation for being more mercurial and creative, able to produce goals apparently out of nowhere.  Which approach would prevail.  I had an inkling that it would be the Brazilians who would come out on top.  My reasoning was that at the end of the day anybody can train hard and plan, but what Brazil does is somehow magical and would transcend the workaday.


Well how wrong can somebody be.  The Germans completely routed the Brazilians in the most astonishing display of ruthless Teutonic efficiency imaginable.  The score hardly looked like the result of a football match.  The Germans scored 7, with the Brazilians just managing to sneak one in the last few minutes of the game when the Germans uncharacteristically but understandably lost concentration on their otherwise impregnable defence.

The interesting thing was that there really wasn't anything all that special about the German approach.  They didn't bring any innovation or even any unusual tactic to the game.  They just did the basic footballing stuff very well.  They kicked the ball accurately.  They passed it to each other reliably.   The defenders made sure that any attempt at their goal was opposed.  Basic stuff, just done very well.   The Brazilians were more or less the opposite.

So what lessons did I take away.  The first is, don't believe in magic.  There is nothing special about Brazilians.  Some of them are great footballers of course.  But there is no special strand of DNA that they have that grants them instant success.   But there is nothing special about Germany either.  In fact, not being special is what made them special in this match.  Success is often, perhaps always, the result not of pulling out some unique trick but simply of doing the basic stuff right time and time again.

I mentioned that the Brazilians did manage one goal.  The reaction of the German goalkeeper was interesting.  He had had a good match, although the nature of the game had meant he not been too troubled for most of it.   But he didn't shrug off the last minute loss.   You could see him remonstrating with the defenders, presumably to learn from the mistake and avoid repeating it.  That was the attitude that one the match.

 Photo credit: Peter Fuchs via photopin cc