Crushed by the German juggernaut
WE SHOULD have known better. Joachim Low landed in Belfast talking of ‘alarming’ frailties in German club football, but it ended as it usually does; in another victory for the machine they call Die Mannschaft.
Northern Ireland gave it a good go. They always do. But it soon became clear they would be joining the long list of teams who have tried and failed to inflict so much as a single defeat on the Germans outside their homeland in World Cup qualifying in the last 83 years.
That incredible away record in this competition now reads: played 47, won 37, drawn 10, lost none.
This was the 13th successive win on foreign soil, against a Northern Ireland team that had not lost a competitive game at Windsor Park for four years.
Although the miserable form of Bundesliga clubs in Europe this season — one win 12 games — might have exposed a rare weakness in the German game, the fault line clearly does not extend to the national team.
Some of the faces may have changed, but the quality remains. Michael O’Neill addressed the issue on the eve of this match.
‘We have Gareth McAuley and Aaron Hughes as key players, and they’re 37. Germany don’t need a player of 37,’ said the Northern Ireland manager.
‘When Philipp Lahm retires at 32, they have another one coming along at 19 or 20. That’s the difference. They continue to have a succession line of players and are able to replace big players quite quickly.’
Not all of them are youngsters like 22-year-old right back Joshua Kimmich, the natural heir to Lahm, who scored the third goal and took his total of assists in World Cup qualifying to eight when he teed up Sebastian Rudy for a sensational strike after just 80 seconds.
Rudy, who was celebrating his first goal for his country, is 27. Sandro Wagner, scorer of the second, is 29 and now has four goals in his first four appearances.
At one point in the first half, Low himself controlled the ball effortlessly with his foot and knee on the touchline before knocking it to Lee Hodson. Quality runs through every seam of this group.
This had the potential to be a very tricky night for a German squad who were uncharacteristically late for training on Wednesday due to the heavy Belfast traffic.
Low and his players have booked out all the rooms in the Stormont Hotel, while the 3,500 away supporters claimed much of the other available accommodation in town even though only 1,000 of them had tickets for the match.
As it turned out, Germany made it look rather easy — just as they had done when scoring twice in the first 20 minutes against Northern Ireland in Hanover a year ago.
until last night, those were the only goals O’Neill’s side had conceded in Group C, raising hopes of an unlikely win against Germany.
But, like so many before them, they tried, and failed.