Uruguay And Germany Fight For Bronze.
There are only two matches left at World Cup 2010 in South Africa and one of those just happens to be the biggest game on the planet, the world cup final between Netherlands and Spain. That takes place on Sunday evening in Soccer City, Johannesburg. But before we get to that we have the 3rd and 4th place play off between Uruguay and Germany which takes place in Port Elizabeth. The play off match is often seen as a bit of an anti climax for the teams involved after the heartbreak of missing out on the chance to make a little bit of history by appearing in a world cup final.
For these two teams though there are a few incentives to make it a competitive game rather than just a glorified friendly match. Uruguay coach, Oscar Taberez has said there will be no such sentiments from his team and they are preparing to fight to the death. They will prepare with the same commitment as they did against the Netherlands and although third place is not the same as the final they will give it their all.
Germany on the other hand has one Miroslav Klose who is still in with a chance of winning the Golden Boot award, which if he manages to do would put him in the history books as the first player to win it twice.. He may also be playing in his last world cup match and has the chance to by pass Gerd Muller as Germany’s all time goal scorer at world cup finals and also Brazilian legend Ronaldo as all time record goal scorer at world cup finals. He needs one goal to pass Muller and two goals to pass Ronaldo, so he has plenty to play for. Klose also feels that he may never win the world cup after losing the final to Brazil in 2002 and losing at the semi final stage to Italy in 2006. He may feel that his race has been run when it comes to the finals in Brazil in 2014, seeing as he will then be 36 years of age.
I’m sure this young German team will also want to go out on a high after not been expected to do this well in the tournament. The same could also be said of Uruguay who probably wouldn’t have been in a lot of peoples picks for a place in the semi finals. There are also many of the bigger teams who would give there right arm to be playing in this match. Brazil, Argentina, France, Italy and England are a few teams that spring to mind.
When these two teams return to their homelands I’m sure they will be mobbed by their fans after putting up some fighting performances and it has to be said especially in the case of Germany playing some damn nice football on the way as well. There will be quite a few offers coming in from the big clubs looking to secure the services of some of the top players in their teams. All the German squad were playing in the Bundesliga before the finals, that will certainly change now when some of the big boys come knocking. All England’s squad played in the Premier League before the finals and probably still will be after, which is a shame because it would improve some of them to play in the more technical leagues in Europe. For a nation that was once so keen to travel to distant lands, there footballers now seem to have gone to the other extreme, unable to leave the comfort zone of the Premier League. They should take the chance while they can.
