Germany still shy of gold standard

Echoing the words of coach Horst Hrubesch, Germany's players were relieved to reach the UEFA European Under-21 Championship semi-finals even if their performance in the 1-1 draw against a second-string England hardly marked them out as potential titlewinners.

Early opener
Needing a point to be certain of joining England in the last four, and three to usurp them as Group B winners, Germany struck after five minutes through Gonzalo Castro but were otherwise found wanting in the final third and were largely on the back foot after Jack Rodwell equalised on the half-hour. "The only thing I'm happy about is reaching the semi-finals; I can't live with the way we did it," said Hrubesch.

'Stopped playing'
Manuel Neuer, impressive again in the Germany goal, added: "We wanted to reach the semis no matter what and now we have achieved that we have to be happy, although I'm not happy with how we did it. We scored the opener and showed some promise until we conceded the equaliser, and then we stopped playing. We tried to protect our lead when we should have pushed on. Then we would have created more chances and might even have won."

'Surprise' selection
England made ten changes to the team which began the previous 2-0 win against Spain, a move which "surprised us a little bit" according to Änis Ben-Hatira. The 19-year-old Hamburger SV midfield player was one of two changes for Germany, earning his first competitive start in place of Marko Marin after two substitute appearances in the preceding games. Was he pleased with his own display? "Not really. I made a lot of mistakes and didn't really settle into the game. I'm confident I'll do much better next time."

'Can play better'
Ultimately, however, the only objective was to reach the last four and Ben-Hatira told uefa.com that Germany are now "fully focused" on Friday's semi-final against the winners of Group A in Helsingborg. "It wasn't a good team performance but we have to analyse things calmly after watching a replay of the match. We can play much better. Considering the potential of this team and the individual players, we haven't shown what we're capable of yet."