Low focused on North showdown

From Macdara Ferris at the Stade de France

Northern Ireland’s win over Ukraine was the surprising story of Thursday, particularly as the eagerly anticipated game between Germany and Poland was a scoreless stalemate at the Stade de France (see our match report from Paris here). Joachim Low’s team top the group on four points, level with Poland, but only a point ahead of the competition debutants led by Michael O’Neill.

However for the German boss, he doesn’t expect his system to be too much different when he plays in Paris again – this time in the Parc des Princes against Northern Ireland.

“It isn’t going to change too much for us,” said Low in answer to the question from extratime.ie about his set up going into the final Group C game. “Northern Ireland have won today. We are still ahead of the group.

“Our aim is to qualify and win the group. We will be very focused on the following game and we are sure we will succeed.”

The expanded 24 team competition has thrown a few unexpected results into the mix. Away from the North’s historic win (see our match report from Lyon here), Iceland deservedly drew 1-1 with Portugal (much to Ronaldo’s chagrin) and Hungary upset fancied side Austria – who Ireland will face in the World Cup qualifiers.

“I don’t know if that is a result from 24 teams (in the Euros) but what we see is that the results are quite close, with many goals conceded at the end of games,” said the manager of the World Champions. “France scored at the end of the game and Northern Ireland as well.

“The teams that participate for the first time, it is the tournament of their lives. They invest everything they have. They do what they are good at, defend and wait for chances on the counter attack. You expect teams to fight and invest everything. I expect to see sides that defend with 10 players behind the ball and wait for their chance.”

The tournament in France is quite open with no dominant team showing their hand yet. So who does Low see as favourites?

“I think in the group stage it is very difficult to predict who is favourite. We’ve seen that in the last tournaments that sides who were not so strong in the group stage, improved later on. France will be a favorite and they have a great side.

“The Italians had a great opening game. There is us and Spain are usually a side who can win a tournament. And there may be another team.

“From the knock out games on, you cannot afford a bad day or mistake and then you need luck to advance so it is too early to predict who will get to the finals.”

In the qualifying campaign Germany lost to Poland for the very first time – losing 2-0 in Warsaw – before gaining revenge with a comprehensive 3-1 victory in Frankfurt.

With the familiarity of those recent contests, plus players lining out together at club level (Gerome Boateng, Mario Gotze, Thomas Muller, Manuel Neuer and Robert Lewandowski at Bayern, with Mats Hummels, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Lukasz Piszczek at Borussia Dortmund), maybe it is no surprise that the two teams cancelled each other out.

“We didn’t concede too many counter attacks which they are strong with,” said Low about the threat from Robert Lewandowski and Arkadiusz Milik (who missed two great oppertunities in the game).

“In the attack, we couldn’t create too many chances. The problem was that the whole of our game in the last third wasn’t very fast.

“We couldn’t accelerate and then there were nine or ten players behind the ball. You have to admit that both sides were every strong defensively. Today we simply couldn’t impose our game style.

“Poland are a great side. We expect in the group stage that it will be an attritional. In the knock out games, sides will have to open up.”

His opposite number mirrored this when he spoke in the post-match press conference ahead of Low. He felt his team, despite their lack of possession (only 37%), were in control and played effectively to their game plan.

“We controlled what was happening on the pitch,” said Adam Nawalka.” There were periods of the match when Germany had the initiative but we were giving them that space consciously in order to move from their pressing to counter attack.

“In the second half from our counter attacks we created some very good goalscoring chances. Maybe I’m not fully happy as we didn’t score a goal but 0-0 is a fair result.”