CONTROL he tournament, thanks to Toni’s rocket
all from the kick-off. And, ively, they played with it for ext 10 minutes as they laid to the Swedish goal. an Draxler saw one shot ed, Jonas Hector another. xler then fired in a low cross ust needed a touch. as one-way traffic. And then nio Rudiger lost possession side the Swedish half. e pass was all it took and us Berg was suddenly bearing on Manuel Neuer. Jerome ng was in hot pursuit ppeared to clip the r’s leg before he send in a shot. forward managed ke contact. Neuer blocked the shot. ee Szymon Marciniak was surrounded by angry navy blueshirted players, all asking the same question. They wanted it referred. And with good reason. But there could not have been any request from Moscow for the Poland official to review the incident. Nor, despite the continued protests from skipper Andreas Granqvist, did the man in green take it upon himself to spend one minute with his pitchside monitor. If it was a failure of the system, it did not affect the Swedes, who began to finally pose some problems of their own. The breakthrough came when Germany overplayed as they tried to build another Germany’s Marco Reus brings relief to Loew’s side with an equaliser that went in off his knee
attack from the back. Kroos’ pass was cut out by Berg, moved out wide quickly to Claesson. The midfielder lifted the ball between the two German centre-backs.
Toivonen chested the ball down, then lifted it over Neuer. It was a strike of real quality.
Ilkay Gundogan then saw a deflected shot cause chaos, the ball rolling the wrong side of the post as Thomas Muller, under pressure, attempted to force home the rebound, under pressure
Just as the referee was contemplating blowing his half-time whistle, Seb Larsson took a quick free-kick. Berg met it with a glancing header, but Neuer proved his equal, palming wide.
With just 45 minutes to save themselves, Loew (left) went for broke. He decided to meet fire with fire and swapped the largely ineffective Draxler with targetman Mario Gomez. The effect was instantaneous. Werner was switched to the left flank and fired in a ball that took two deflections.
Reus gambled and it popped up for him to finish off his knee.
Sweden somehow survived a nervy 10 minutes, but the temperature had been raised and the Germans settled.
Werner’s pace was causing Janne Andersson’s side all sorts of problems and, as the game entered its later stages, the Swedes were being stretched.
Germany finally broke them with Kroos’ curling shot to keep the champions’ hopes alive.