After producing the best performance in the first phase of World Cup group matches with its emphatic 4-0 win over Australia, Germany is being extra wary of Serbia.
“It’s [Serbia’s] last chance to stay in the tournament and we’ll have to be very careful and concentrated,” Germany assistant coach Hansi Flick said of today’s game. “Australia was no measuring stick and Serbia is a very good team, with players in top clubs in Europe. We’ll have to improve what we did well against Australia.”
And so the Serbians face a double dilemma in the Group D match: The Balkan team is coming off a mediocre performance in losing 1-0 to Ghana, while Germany was at its clinical best against Australia to boost its claims to the title. Another loss will almost certainly end Serbia’s chances of progressing.
Serbia coach Radomir Antic said his squad had lost some confidence in its opening match, but was capable of rebounding against the Germans.
“We are facing the team that has shown the best football so far, in my opinion. I was impressed with their game,” Antic said on Wednesday. “We know we have to rise to the occasion. That’s the trademark of real champions.”
Serbia’s only claim to a win over Germany at the World Cup came when the country was part of Yugoslavia, which beat West Germany in the 1962 quarterfinals in Chile.
“This upcoming match is really a historic match for us,” Antic said. “But Germany should also inspire us to regain the passion and joy in our game. We were too tight against Ghana, we failed mentally. All our players have to raise their level.”
The teams were scheduled to have a training session yesterday at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, but FIFA told both sides on Wednesday that heavy rain over the past two days had damaged the pitch too much for practice at the venue.
The German squad decided to delay its trip. The players were to have their final training session near their base outside Pretoria before flying to Port Elizabeth yesterday afternoon, instead of at noon as initially planned.
Serbian striker Milan Jovanovic, who is set to join Liverpool from Standard Liege, said the loss to Ghana “affected our mood” and that Germany’s big win over Australia didn’t help.
“They have been the best team so far,” Jovanovic said. “To beat them, we’ll have to raise above ourselves. We don’t want to ruin what we’ve done after only two games at the World Cup. We’ll have to be more courageous.”
Serbia midfielder Gojko Kacar took a more optimistic tone, saying he feels his team can compete with Germany.
“No team is here just to make up the numbers. Look at how Brazil struggled against [North] Korea,” Kacar said of five-time champion Brazil’s 2-1 win over the little-known team from the reclusive communist nation. “So anything can happen.”
Germany has been working on ways to isolate tall Serbia striker Nikola Zigic and prevent him from distributing the ball to teammates. The 2.03m Zigic uses his height to head long balls into the path of his teammates.
Midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger has missed two practice sessions because of a cold, but should be fit to play today.
Flick said Schweinsteiger is getting better and although he sat out Wednesday’s team practice, he did do work on his own.
Germany is taking every precaution to ensure other squad members don’t get sick after the sudden drop in temperature this week and the arrival of wintery conditions.
Flick said Germany’s players have been told to dress warmly and even to blow-dry their hair after showers — and “to listen to their mothers’ advice.”
Group D
Table after one game
Team | W | D | L | F | A | Pts |
Germany | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 3 |
Ghana | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
Serbia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Australia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
* qualifies for round of 16
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier