Why we're ready to fall in love with the German national side (honestly!)

By Mark Douglas on Jun 14, 10 11:48 AM

Nothing is guaranteed to send the English into paroxsyms of fear more than a strong German team and judging by last night's excellent defeat of Australia, that's exactly what we have in South Africa.

A young, fearless Germany moved the ball quickly, accurately and with conviction, seemingly picking off Australia at will with the kind of free-flowing movement that Fabio Capello craves in his Three Lions.

90 minutes against the weakest team in their group is not enough evidence to formulate a sound judgement but already they have the look of a team ready to write another chapter in Germany's proud World Cup history.

It shouldn't really have surprised us that much because Joachim Loew's team includes a core of players who impressed in the under-21 European Championships in Sweden last summer - a tournament many of my North East colleagues writing for national newspapers were dispatched to. Most came away raving about Werder Bremen's Mesut Ozil and he was superb last night - as was his former under-21 colleague Thomas Muller of Bayern Munich.

What was equally as notable as Germany's suave brand of attacking football was the favourable reaction that it garnered in England this morning. Maybe I'm speaking out of turn but I genuinely sense a reassesment in the attitude of fans in this country to one of our oldest footballing foes, and not before time.

I think much of it is down to the way the country embraced the hordes of young England fans at the last World Cup in 2006. Pundits predicted carnage as hundreds of thousands descended on German cities but what actually happened was they disarmed their visitors with their superb hospitality and equally impressive affection for England and it's domestic game.

My abiding memory of being in Stuttgart in 2006 (as a supporter, by the way) was standing in the fan park before England's game with Ecuador with a beer in hand (plenty of bars where you never had to queue for more than five minutes was their other great masterstroke) and being accosted by a group of Germans who were desperate to meet our boys in the final.

I spent about ten minutes listing the limitations of the class of 2006 but the main spokesman in the group wouldn't have it, telling me in great detail about the strengths of our first XI. When England duly limped into the quarter-finals I sought him out and he somewhat apologetically reassured me that "kick and rush football" might yet get us to Berlin.

We didn't of course, but I suspect random acts of friendship like this probably melted away a lot of the scepticism and lazy stereotyping of the German national side among the many of us who were there for the 2006 tournament.

It probably helps that we no longer see them as a monument to Teutonic invincibility either. While England were undone by Germany in 1970, 1990 and 1996 the truth is that we've actually got a pretty handy record against them over the last decade.

Wins at Euro 2000 (KK's high water mark in charge of the national side), that stunning 5-1 in Munich and even a 2-1 friendly win in November 2008 that ended a 35-year unbeaten run at Berlin's Olympic Stadium prove that we have long consigned our inferiority complex to the waste bin of history.

Could we repeat the feat if we came up against Loew's exciting brat pack of 2010? Well, Germany are yet to be tested defensively and that is where they have looked suspect at times. They can be vulnerable to pace and if Lennon can start producing a final ball, that is something England do possess on their better days.

German success offers England hope for the present and future. We're not so different from the Germans when it comes to the beautiful game - not as technically gifted as Spain, Brazil or Holland but with assets of our own like workrate, unity, strength and no shortage of skill. If they can do it, so can we.