Same in Germany. Would be really suprised if we somehow win tomorrow. Especially the DFB f***ed it up and now the players are in focus.
Agreed - I've never had lower expectations going into a tournament in my lifetime.
Not to mention, the tournament is being lambasted back home because of Qatar's record and there are active boycotts against it at pubs and in homes across the country.
I get why people feel this way about our NT a this tourney. But I can't be anything but hyped after the way we played in qualifying.
Sure the NL results were disappointing, but the players openly talked about those matches being friendlies in interviews before the matches were even played...so regardless of how any of us feel about the NL, we know that the players weren't giving those games 100% like they did in qualifiers and should tomorrow.
As long as we stay humble and play as hard as we did in qualifying, I feel similar to how I did in 2010. When the expectation to be a good team had returned, but the expectation of being a top team wasn't there again yet since so much of our youth hadn't yet proven itself for the NT on the biggest stage.
We didn't win in 2010...but I'll go to my grave arguing that we would have if only Mesut had gone down at the end of the first half against spain; when he was fouled in the box, but didn't get the call because he tried to fight through the obvious foul.
If he had just gone down and gotten us the pen to take a 1-0 lead into half-time, with how lethal our counter-attacking play was in 2010, we'd have stopped Spain's historic run and been deserved favorites against the dutch in the final.
