World Cup Report Card | Germany | OneFootball

Despite their dramatic 4-2 win over Costa Rica, Germany will be heading back home from Qatar because of Spain’s 2-1 loss to Japan.

At one point, Germany did seem to be going through as both them and Spain led in their respective games. But things took an ugly turn for them, as Japan completed a comeback and while Germany did comeback after being 2-1 down, the Blue Samurai’s win against La Roja negated their result completely.

In hindsight, the loss to Japan will hurt Germany a lot considering that they were 1-0 up in that game and that they were quite good against Spain. But international football is a game of much smaller margins than club football and stranger things have happened.

Most important player: Technically, Niclas Füllkrug’s goal against Spain was Germany’s most important goal of the tournament but Jamal Musiala’s performances caught special attention. He was exceptional against both Costa Rica and Japan and the youngster showed that he is ruthless when it comes taking players on and fearless when it comes to doing it again and again.

Biggest disappointment: It is fair to say that Germany created a fair amount of chances in the tournament but what let them down was a lack of finishing and it set up the tournament for failure. Thomas Muller has a poor tournament and the lack of a reliable striker apart from Füllkrug ended up costing them.

Grade: D – On another day, they could have beaten Spain and Germany were good in terms of their raw numbers. But the output was sorely missing.

GWFN