I was talking to my friend on the phone when I was watching Brazil vs Germany and my friend was convinced that Germany went easy on the USA. His reasoning was that Brazil has a much better team than the USA and that they were still utterly destroyed by Germany. He said that they went easier on the USA because they didn't want to embarrass us because of our countries close relations.
1. Relations between Germany and USA are strained of late because of the NSA and CIA spying issues.
2. Even if they weren't strained, it's considered universally disrespectful to go easy on your opponent.
3. While my friend thinks that the Germany, Brazil game is proof that Germany went easy on us, I think the opposite because I feel if they could've scored 7 or 8 goals on us, they probably would have.
4. I think my friend overestimated the Brazilian team and undervalues the USA team.
What do you guys think? I know Germany vs USA is over and done with but I want to settle this argument once and for all.
BTW I'm a newb to the sport. If I'm missing a link here, I apologize.
Well the preconditions of both of the games were quite different. Both GER and the US knew that a draw will most likely send both through so there was a more cautious approach, especially from the US. GER had a lot of chances against the US as well but just couldn't finish them off or precisely play the last pass.
Brazil went out there with some kind of harakiri strategy, obviously believing that they needed to break us early. That completely backfired and actually broke them (after the 0:3 at least). After that, they were in trance and GER just kept the foot on the gas, it wasn't all to difficult to keep scoring then.
Bottom line is that US went out there with a more compact, defensively focussed approach to keep it at 0:0. Brazil went out there completely disorganized trying to create momentum goin forward. If that fails, which it did, you're basically bound to concede a couple of goals against a German team that, until 2 years ago, was almost exclusively winning big games through counter attacks.
Secondly, I agree mostly on your points. I think we need to take the physical conditions into account as well. Despite them not having to play in Manaus like we did, Germany were probably just as gassed as we were.
We should also take into account what that game means. It was for 1st & 2nd place in the group, not for a spot in the final. Germany knew they were going through so it wouldn't have been in their best interest to throw the kitchen sink at us and needlessly tire themselves out.
Lastly, USA were far more organized than Brazil defensively. We were setup so that it would be extremely difficult to concede the goals Brazil did with any amount of frequency, who played such a recklessly open game. Despite that, they probably could've put 3 or 4 past us if not for Howard.
First of all, pretty sure nothing that went on in these games has anything to do with the state of relations or anything other political.
Then it's not really possible to conclude from the difference in the scorelines, and the assumption that Brazil is stronger than the US, that either we must have gone easy on the US or the assumption must be wrong.
There are a lot of factors in play, games have different circumstances and play out in different ways.
I'd say basically you are right, we did certainly not 'go easy' on you, and your DEFENSIVE performance against us was certainly not worse than Brazil's defensive performance.
That being said, the games had different stakes, you concentrated on not losing too high against us (you didn't have to win to progress), while we were happy we had the game under control and didn't feel we needed to exhaust ourselves.
In the semi, Brazil needed to win, wanted to attack and got ahead of themselves so that everything went wrong for them.
Also we are known to be able to raise the level of our game when needed.
It's often like that, 2006 WC winners Italy for example played like shit in some group games but raised their game when meeting top opponents later in the tournament.
USA had 35%, and were pressed back fighting for there lives the whole game and never really could move the ball past there own half to get something going without being pressed back. USA had there best game against Germany at the World Cup as a defensive unit.  Germany was not taking it easy, they were just having a hard time scoring. Thats 2 different things.
I really don't get why people use the Brazil x Germany gauge as some "USA was a superior team and should of been in the semis" argument. They play totally different and on any given day the results could of been different for both countries when facing ze Germans. Also take into account Brazil didnt have its defensive organizer which doesn't help anything for them.
Well, and moreover, the USA game was played at noon in Recife in a hot and humid climate, while the Brazil match was played in Belo Horizonte, in the evening at around 20 deg C, that is, perfect "football weather" for the German team.
So as there was practically nothing at stake against the US, while playing against Brazil was a knockout match leading to the final of the World Cup, the German NT would have been stupid to go all out against the US team which, additionally, is coached by Jürgen Klinsmann who knows Jogi Löw and his style pretty well.
So you have a well set-up US team against a German team who were already looking forward to more energy consuming play-off matches and for whom a draw would have been fully sufficient, so the players did what they had to do and not more.
We have a proverb in German: "A good horse only jumps as high as it needs to jump", and this is certainly true in case of the match against the US team.
Though nothing in this world is impossible, believe me it is a bit far fetched that #1 which you listed is in the working (in effect) when it comes to a football match.
Germany probably could've 'flexed their muscles' if the USA game held more importance, but that's all in hindsight.
and then let's not forget that the 7-1 is an absolute freak result, something that will probably never happen again in such a high profile match, and something that we won't be able to do to the Brazilians again if even we play them 50 times.
Depends. If you play the same Brazil team you faced in the semis, I'd say the chances of bettering that 7 goal margin is higher.