Tekst Saša Ibrulj
Did we expect too much from Germany and Italy? I mean, we always knew this was going to be a tactical battle, the event with 22 chess pieces in the hands of Antonio Conte and Joachim Löw. And if they have tactically perfect match - this was near to that - then it was always destined to go look like it looked like last night in Bordeaux.
Those players on the pitch looked like machines, drones with the remote controller being in the hands of their coaches. They did their job perfectly and there was no place for individualism or for improvisation, something that would create an advantage for one of the teams. Löw surprised with his setup; he was obviously impressed with what Conte did this year and he decided to adjust his team to this.
We wrote about that in our Euro 2016 preview; Germany have tried a couple of different systems in the last two years, but probably the worst was the one with three at the back. However, Löw (correctly) assessed that this is the system that would neutralise Italian and he opted for it. On the other side, Conte was always on the course of stopping Germans before doing anything up front, so - again - we had two teams canceling each other.
So, can you really name this a bad match? Boring match? Almost everything was working perfectly fine for both coa...
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