Joachim Loew hailed Germany’s “brilliant” 4-1 win over Mexico in the FIFA Confederations Cup semi-final and said his youthful squad are ambitious enough to beat Chile in the final.
Loew opted not to take his World Cup-winning stars to the Confederations Cup, but Germany’s young guns booked their place in tomorrow’s final in St Petersburg after a devastating opening spell in Sochi, Russia.
Attacking midfielder Leon Goretzka, 22, hit two goals in the first eight minutes to stun Mexico.
Photo: AFP
Timo Werner, 21, made it 3-0 midway through the second half, then Marco Fabian scored Mexico’s late stunning consolation with a thunderbolt free-kick, before Germany substitute Amin Younes, 23, netted his side’s fourth.
“From the beginning, we did exactly what we set out to do — we were very dominant and brilliant in the opening stages,” Germany head coach Loew said. “They pushed us back a bit in the second phase of the first half, which was to be expected, and we gave up a lot of ball. All in all, 4-1 is a great result. We wanted to go far, but this is nothing that we could have expected at the start of the tournament.”
After Germany drew 1-1 with Chile in the group stages on Thursday last week, Loew said his team is hungry enough to beat the Copa America champions in the final.
“Chile is the most powerful opponent in this tournament, we know them pretty well and we expect them to go for it in the final,” Loew said. “They will be trying flat out to pull it off, as they are coming to the end of their season, and we will have to try and counter that. We’ve become a team over the last few weeks. There’s fun in the dressing room, but they aren’t over the top. They know there is work ahead and they are ambitious enough to beat Chile.”
Goretzka and Werner are now the tournament’s joint top-scorers with three goals each.
After scoring twice in Sochi, Goretzka said Germany have a score to settle against Chile.
“I was really happy to help the team with the two goals, our single-minded goal was to reach the final, so we’re delighted,” Goretzka said. “We’re looking forward to playing Chile again, because in the second half [of the group match] we had the feeling the draw was not enough. Now we have another chance against this top-flight team.”
Mexico next play Portugal in tomorrow’s third-placed playoff.
“Our way of playing is very aggressive. We try to get forward all the time and we paid for that,” Mexico head coach Juan Carlos Osorio said. “They are fair winners, but the scoreline would seem to suggest they were way better and I don’t think that was the case.”
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