Holders are beaten – to set off an earthquake in Mexico
The sun was finally setting in Moscow at the end of a long day for Joachim Low when he was reminded that three of the past four defending champions at World Cup finals have been eliminated in the first round, and suddenly a sense of resolution returned to him.
“We will not suffer the same fate,” he said, unsure whether the question was serious or not. “We will go to the next round.”
It is, nonetheless, a strange theme of recent years, encompassing Spain in 2014, Italy in 2010 and France in 2002, all of them witnessing the end of great eras at a Word Cup finals. The humiliating confirmation that, yes, those intervening four years did see legs get heavier, factions grow deeper, the decline become steeper.
These are early days yet and Low was talking like a man who finds himself unexpectedly pulled over at the side of the autobahn wondering what could possibly have gone wrong with his expensive piece of German engineering. He took solace in an improved second half, in 61 per cent possession, in all the things that should add up to success and yet he knew that Mexico had been the fresh new force sticking it to the old regime.
One of the great achievements of Juan Carlos Osorio, Mexico’s Colombian coach who graduated from Liverpool John Moores University, is that he made the world champions look like England on a bad day. England in the European championship of 2016, or at the previous two World Cup finals when they were often wide open at the back, guileless in attack, and finally reliant on pumping the ball into the penalty area to try to get a goal.
That was Germany in the closing stages, first with Mario Gomez on as a substitute and then in the final moments with their keeper Manuel Neuer trying to get his head on a cross. It is not often one sees them panic like this but they had undone themselves in the first half when Mexico had exploited them ruthlessly on the counter-attack, creating enough chances to make this game much less closer than it was.
This was a difficult day to pick the worst German performance, although one could start with Sami Khedira, who gave up possession for Mexico’s first-half goal scored by the 22-year-old winger Hirving Lozano, the nation’s prodigy currently at PSV Eindhoven.
Mats Hummels got dragged out of position so often he looked much older than his 29 years. Joshua Kimmich was just a part-time rightback and, while he was away, Mexico made use of the space. When at last they got their counter-attack right and Lozano cut back on to his right foot to beat Neuer at his near post, it was strange to see that the man covering for the perennially absent Kimmich was Mesut Ozil.
The Arsenal midfielder tried to get his team going but they looked, for this game at least, a shadow of their former selves, and Thomas Muller barely left a mark on the game. It was astonishing to watch a player as accomplished as Toni Kroos so at sea in the first half in a midfield he did not control, such unfamiliar territory for the man from Real Madrid. He struck a shot that the Mexico goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa pushed on to the bar in the first half and then, in the closing stages, found himself probing unsuccessfully, playing in front of Mexico, rather than passing through them.
An exhausted Mexico team had dropped back by then, almost fatally, and when Low suggested his team were “jinxed” he had a point. The energy of the boys of El Tri in the first half had dwindled, but what energy it had been.
There were magnificent performances from Lozano and the Porto midfielder Hector Herrera, as well as old Premier League faces. Carlos Vela came off before the hour completely spent, the former Arsenal man having chased Germany from box to box. Javier Hernandez laid the ball on for the goal and might have had one himself.
“We played very badly in the first half,” Low said. “We were not able to impose our way of playing. We were not effective in the spaces.”
He suggested his midfield had not been deep enough. “We didn’t look ourselves,” he said. “We couldn’t open up the space.” He denied the team had lacked the stamina to cope with Mexico but, as for the rest, he struggled for an answer.
Osorio had sent on the 39-yearold centre-back Rafael Marquez in the closing stages to play in his fifth World Cup finals – the third man in history to do so. Germany probably went as close as they did all half later when substitute Julian Brandt narrowly shot wide.
In added time, with the Mexico penalty area loaded with bodies, they barely cleared the first defender with a corner. It is moments such as those which must make Low wonder. Germany have been semi-finalists or better in the past seven World Cups and European Championships, although this is a new problem and the next game against Sweden on Saturday, Low said, will be “decisive”.