Guest blog: Christian Schatzle, Germany
Post categories: World Cup 2010,ÌýWorld Cup Have Your Say
| 12:50 UK time, Friday, 25 June 2010
Over the course of the World Cup, World Cup Have Your Say is running a series of guest blogs by bloggers from across the world.
This is the seventh, by Christian Schatzle who blogs on German football at .
On Sunday afternoon the world cup game between Germany and England in the round of the last 16 starts - and every German is excited about that.
Here in Germany the encounter of these teams is called the "eternally young duel."
And in fact, for the Germans, there is no other game with that explosiveness. The reason for that is obvious: The Wembley Goal!
England has become World Champion after scoring an irregular goal. Even younger Germans know this fact - and some people think that this is the reason for England's bad luck in the last penalty shootouts.
Both the semi-final shootout in italy's World Cup 1990, as well as the semi-final shootout in England's European Cup 1996, were won by Germany. This is also the Germans' hope for the forthcoming duel in South Africa.
But why should this game be decided in penalty shootout again? The answer is obvious - both teams trust their defence and do not risk too much in attack.
The German team plays in a 4-2-3-1 formation, which means that there is only one striker on the field.
In this formation the opponent has only a little space. But unfortunately, the disadvantage of this formation is that you only have one support player in attack.
As England have a very good defence, but are slow at bringing play forward, most people here do not think that we will see many chances of scoring a goal. Many Germans expect the game to be boring, and that the result will be a 0-0 or a 1-1 draw.
But why are we Germans that pessimistic? After a great start against the team of Australia, the whole country spoke of being World Champions in 2010.
But a few days later we got to the bottom of the facts. Our team lost against Serbia and the best striker - Miroslav Klose - got sent off.
But every time when the German team is under pressure it plays a respectable football, and so we won our final game, against Ghana.
Now we are looking forward to get to the round of the last eight after winning the game against England on the penalty shootout. Then we would be one step closer to our great goal - to be Football Champion 2010.
In summary, the Germans are really hopeful to see a fair and exciting game with a better end for the German team.
Even though England has a better quality of players, Germany will counteract this by appearing as a well-functioning team on the field.
Nobody here could image to be eliminated from the World Championship in South Africa by the English football team.
