Bayern Munich Defenders Driving Germany’s Bid for Euro 2016 Glory

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: June 22, 2016

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Heading into Euro 2016, defence seemed to be the greatest obstacle standing between Joachim Low's Germany and victory in France.

Die Mannschaft were hemorrhaging goals, with their 2-0 win over Hungary in their final pre-tournament warm-up friendly marking their first clean sheet in nearly a year. The last time they had held opponents scoreless had been in a June 13, 2015 match against Gibraltar, who only played their first recognised international match in late 2013 and are not yet FIFA members.

Over the past year, Germany have had days in which their attack was on and days in which it stuttered. They conceded twice to Scotland last September yet managed to come out victorious. Yet a month later, Ireland did enough to hold the 2014 World Cup winners scoreless over 90 minutes en route to a narrow 1-0 win.

There was no doubting the quality among superstars like Thomas Muller, Mesut Ozil, Marco Reus and Mario Gotze, but the Germans were so poor at the back that there was good reason to question whether they would stand a chance at winning Euro 2016 just by outgunning their opponents. After all, in the year prior to the tournament's opening kick, Germany had lost to the United States, Ireland, France, England and Slovakia.

Three of those defeats came in the last five matches preceding the competition, during which Die Mannschaft's defense conceded a whopping nine goals. Surely, it seemed, Germany's only chance at winning Euro 2016 was to hope the attack was at its sharpest for seven consecutive games.



Yet at the end of their group-stage campaign, the narrative of Germany's Euros has been entirely different from what had been expected. It's been a low-scoring tournament, yet at the time of their clinching first place in Group C, only Poland were able to match Germany's record of three games without conceding. The only other side not to have conceded by Wednesday morning was Italy, with their gr...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football

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