Your Syndicate Daily is proudly presented by "Bündnis 90" and the European Greens.
With warm preemptive congratulations to Kanzlerin Baerbock :)
Your friendly bookie wholeheartedly endorses a German velvet revolution. Let's go Europe!
Day 5: Recap
Bookie’s Stats—
Spread: 5-7
Straight up: 6-4-2
What. Absolute. Garbage. To put it in the tongue of my Vaterland, "was für eine Scheiße". Your friendly bookie told you it would be terrible. Now you all know why we've been so down on our team. Na ja. We knew it was coming
Junk football promised. Junk football delivered. I took special care to resign myself to the what would inevitably happen; to the point that I'm neither surprised nor disappointed. None of us expected anything else.
A listless and unimaginative performance could not have been more emblematic of the current state of the German team. Zero shots on target. What felt like 400 crosses hopeless into a crowded box. An own-goal scored by one of the returning actors Löw took too long to bring back from exile.
Here's your photo to sum up the day:
Not your fault, Toni. Löw botched it, just as we all expected he would.
S.S.S. Tactical Breakdown 
To those wondering why the bookie opts to include his projected lineups in the dailies, I assure you it's not a case of "id". Seeing how managers might have set up their talent, then comparing how they did, makes for interesting speculative analysis.
Okay, fitting in all the graphics also satisfies your friendly bookie's completionist inner-drive. No sense in starting a digital version of a Panini sticker album unless we fill in all the slots. There's that too.
In the case of Germany, I'll have to concede that "id" prepares to rear its ugly head. I openly wondered during the preview section if I had built something more sensible than what the Bundestrainer would put forward.
Ach du Scheiße, here we go.
As you can see, I put the three Bayern starters up top in the positions that they normally play. Since we've no Lewandowski here, Müller moves up from the ten-spot to a false-nine role. This seemed the most effective way of reintegrating Müller into the team whilst keeping players familiar with one another's style connected on an axial plane.
The ideal midfield partnership remains Kimmich and Goertzka. Since the latter--known at the time--is injured, we let Kimmch operate as a holding defensive midfielder. There was no need to move him to right back. Emré Can and, believe it or not, Niklas Süle have been filling in for their respective clubs at the right fullback this season.
One can argue that playing Kimmich that deep adversely affects his ability to involve himself in the play. I'll counter this emphatically. He would have been much more effective today as a centralized flight director. France had answers for our best player no matter how many times he switched flanks. All they had to do was crowd the box.
We'll get to Didier Deschamps' intellectually superior tactics much later on. First we have to cover the farce put forth by Löw. The Bundesrepublik let out a collective sigh when we saw the team sheet. The Bundestrainer rolled out the exact same XI as against Latvia.
Lineup—Germany—Match One (3-4-3) (6/15/2021)
Others will label it differently. I definitely saw a 3-4-3. Kimmich and Robin Gosens were meant to play advanced positions. Theoretically I suppose, Gnabry, Müller, and Havertz were bunched together so as to encourage fluid rotations and creative interchanges. This didn't happen because the trio up top wasn't organized properly.
I didn't mind the back-three with Hummels slightly ahead in his pivot ("quarterback" for the American readers) role. When one is facing a Paul Pogba-N'Golo Kante midfield tandem, a good strategy is a triangle of experienced players winning battles underneath forward deployed wingbacks. Kroos, Gündogan, and Hummels were well positioned.
This part of the plan generated about as much success as could reasonably be hoped for. Gündogan got some good runs off. Kroos got stranded by a lot of backward passes. For all the talk you'll here about him, Hummels rattled off a few incisive through balls. Kimmich and Gosens found space to cross. We run into problems in the final third because they had nothing but traffic to cross into.
To reiterate, ZERO SHOTS ON TARGET. Müller sent that light touch header wide in the 22nd. Gnabry did about as well as he could with that first-time hit in the 54th. Lloris collected the only real creative service to Gnabry two minutes after that. That's it. That's all. Three chances that hardly deserve to be called chances.
That's it? I'm afraid so. Those three less-than-one-quarter chances were the only real sights at goal we got all game, unless you wish to count Gündogan's mishit in the 38th or Gosens' nasty challenge on Pavard in the 59th. Those might be classified as 1/16th chances at best. The match in total was good and pathetic from the German perspective.
I can hardly believe the gall of Löw and some members of the Munich crowd complaining that the French were wasting time at the end. They could take all the time that they needed. The outcome of the match was settled. Match official Carlos del Cerro Grande could have added twenty extra minutes of injury time. We had no use for it.
The grades tell the next part of the story.
Grades—Deutschland (Match One)
Manuel Neuer | A (2,0) |
Ilkay Gündogan | B- (3,5) |
Serge Gnabry | B- (3,5) |
Matthias Ginter | B- (3,5) |
Joshua Kimmich | C+ (4,0) |
Mats Hummels | C (4,5) |
Toni Kroos | C (4,5) |
Antonio Rüdiger | C (4,5) |
Robin Gosens | D (5,0) |
Thomas Müller | D (5,0) |
Kai Havertz | D- (5,5) |
Only the original XI factored in. Sané, Werner, Volland, and Can had no real impact. Neuer made a fine save in the one piece of meaningful action he saw. I liked the enterprising runs I saw from Gündogan and Ginter actually made some vital tackles sure to be overshadowed by that incredible one on Mbappé from Hummels.
One of the reasons the French weren't able to muster up too many chances of their own (beyond the two disallowed goals) had to do with the fine track-back work from Gnabry. The Bayern man did extremely well on the defensive side of the ball. Offensively, he did okay trying to get into space from the center-forward position Löw had no business putting him in.
Kimmich also exhibited fine hustle, but wasn't capable of producing much with his flank switches. He appeared moody from the start, perhaps frustrated by his right wingback deployment. On more than one occasion, he pitched a fit for not receiving a through ball. Then there was the booking and the near sending off. His blind square crosses into the overcrowded box were infuriating.
Kroos and Rüdiger didn't see a great deal of action, through they were involved in the most of the set-piece designs. The one in the 25th where Rüdiger hovered around the wall, Müller feigned the hit, and Kroos tried to bent around the wall Rüdiger and Müller forced several yards back was rather cool. Kroos' final execution on was nevertheless poor, as were his other free-kicks and corners.
Gosens and Müller racked up plenty of poor touches. Müller in particular looked foolish getting dispossessed on multiple occasions. The bookie hesitates to say that he did look like an old man out of place on this day. The youngest player on the team, Kai Havertz, looked really out of place. Pairing them together axially was never a good idea as they know nothing of one another's game.
Curse the false lessons derived from that meaningless friendly against Latvia! Somehow one knew that Löw would be so impractical as to use the exact same XI as he did in that test match. One can't run a squad on autopilot. It's as if he's already checked out already. Now the Bundestrainer has three short days to figure something else out. He looks as if he's more in the mood to take a long nap.
One doesn't really see a way back from this. A new constellation that replaces Havertz with Sané will do better. Assuming Goretzka can get fit in time for Portugal, he and Kimmich can partner once again in midfield. This gives the team a Bayern-axis up top and in the midfield. We then revert to a back four, dusting off Leipzig's Lukas Klostermann and Marcel Halstenberg to work as the fullbacks.
Assuming Goretzka's presence, we might see this:
Lineup—Germany—PROJECTED (4-2-1-3)
We match the Portuguese 4-2-1-3 with our own. Five of the six top players are Bayern stars. That's helpful. Kroos can likely assist Müller with the false-nine work. One tells the two Leipzig teammates, who have themselves not played together often this season, to hang back. The battles must be won in midfield; the main push centralized.
Without Goretzka, it obviously gets more difficult. Jonas Hofmann's injury means we can't build a Gladbach axis in midfield. The only, somewhat desperate, solution would be to keep Kimmich at right back, allow Gündogan and Kroos to partner deep, and start Jamal Musiala behind Müller. That has less chance of producing something sensational, though we might be in for something embarrassing as well.
And the French? Bookie picked them to win this competition with good reason. Having seen all 24 teams compete now, I'm sticking with my pick. Check out what a good manager Deschamps is.
That's how the layman football fan aligns the World Champions. Here's how the expert does it. Note that he doesn't use the same fucking lineup as the one of his final pre-tournament friendly. Grrrrr.
Lineup—France—Match One (4-2-1-3) (6/15/2021)
You've surely read the term "crowded box" several times in this analysis. Above you can see why. Pogba and Kante were stationed very far back, with the former working an ever-so-subtle stagger. A brilliant move from the French trainer. Very little risk here.
He knew we didn't have the speed to reach the danger area before Kante and Pogba could retreat back from their close assignments in the diamond. There were always six blue shirts there to block out the crosses coming in from the space they ceded on the flanks.
Insofar as their own offensive impetus was concerned, a player like Pogba is pacey enough to initiate a counter at any time. He did so on enough occasions to put this game to bed with a very lopsided scoreline.
Were it not for Hummels' incredible tackle, some unsung heroics from Ginter, and the two borderline offside goals, this one could have finished 6-0.
Yes, gentlemen. It's that bad for Germany. We're no better off than we were in November. In all likelihood, the worst is yet to come.
Quality riffs during the Portugal match today, brothers.
This being a daily focused on one match, they'll appear tomorrow.
“Riffs of the Day”—Day Five
Reader: Did I just see Antonio Rüdiger pull a Luis Suarez?
Vicey: I can confirm that you saw that, 51-M.
Sigh. This is what it's come to. If you can't beat em', go full-blown MacGruff.
Reader: The white shorts a'int working Vicey.
Vicey: They're not the only things not working, 11-M. I still take your point.
Ahem. Die Nationalmannschaft wears BLACK shorts! Poor Mats Hummels had enough to deal with apart from looking like a damned teapot.
Reader: Holy lord what a tackle by Hummels!
Vicey: You a'int kidding 16-M. No one has any right to give him any shit about the own-goal after that.
Margin for error = 0.0001%
Reader: We've got a parachuter in the stadium and a player biting his opponent. You sure this a'int a boxing match, Vicey?
Vicey: You're a treasure, 11-M. What a zing!
By the way, fuck this asshole! What earthly purpose does it serve to injury innocent fans with a reckless and dangerous act such as this?
Please don't confuse the loony louts in Greenpeace for the center-left political party I express support for at the beginning of the dailies.
The difference between a European Green Party and Greenpeace is that we have these things called policy platforms and a basic sense of purpose in life.
DAY SIX--PREVIEW
The Round Two Lines having debuted just a few hours ago, all three are holding for now. I'll check out the time stamps to see if either one of the upset specials roll.
Finland vs. Russia
vs. 
THE LINE: Finland +1 Goal (holding)
Wales vs. Turkey
vs. 
THE LINE: Turkey +1 Goal (holding)
Italy vs. Switzerland
vs. 
THE LINE: Switzerland +1 Goal (holding)
GENTLEMEN, ENTER YOUR WAGERS
