Italy Bashes Germany, 2-1

Well, that was pretty damn lame. Germany's defense came unglued on several occasions, and the offense bumbled and stumbled for most of the match. To be fair to the offense, it was clear after the first goal that Germany was going to dominate possession but having trouble breaking down the Italian defense in the final third. Still, Germany lacked creativity, no one showed the guts to take his marker off the dribble, and we were reduced to floating high balls into the area and weird diagonal passes that went nowhere.

All the credit in the world to Italy, they're annoying but they did everything they had to today: capitalized on an early chance (an early gift is more like it), outplayed Germany in the midfield whenever there was a crucial moment, and basically looked like they came into the match 100 percent expecting to win.

Balotelli's goals:

Can't find footage of the penalty, if someone has it, feel free to post a link. A very disappointing performance today. I don't think Jogi made good tactical decisions, we didn't show any flexibility, and basically our defense made too many mistakes for a team trying to reach the final of a premier international tournament.

My PERSONAL take - this is just me talking, not trying to speak for anyone else:

Honestly, for me, this does not even approach one tenth the misery I was feeling after the Bayern loss. I'm a Bayern fan first, a Bayern fan second, and a Bayern fan third. If I had to go further, I'm a Baltimore Ravens fans fourth, a QPR fan fifth, and then maybe a German National Team fan. Don't get me wrong, it was awful to watch, and I was hoping like hell we'd pull it out. And I feel bad for the guys on the team, and for all of y'all who support Die Roten and Die Nationalelf equally. But I was thinking about it last night, and winning this tournament wouldn't have done anything to make me feel better after the losses to Chelsea and Dortmund.

In fact - I might have been afraid to admit this to myself, but I can see now that it's true - I don't really care about the Dortmund loss. The only thing I really, really want to see is Bayern win the UEFA Champions League. Nothing else in the world of sport is really ever going to truly satisfy me. If I could just watch that, I'd happily retire this blog and stop watching. Really, the biggest disappointment today was that Mueller came on, so Germany didn't keep alive the streak of wins when he plays.

Anyway, a disappointing result and a rather poor performance, but hopefully the guys can take some time off and recharge themselves. Some of them look just completely exhausted. We'll be back tomorrow or over the weekend to look in on some transfer market stuff and check out the summer schedule. Thanks for reading.