Germany 1-0 France
Brazil 2-1 Colombia
semifinal Germany-Brazil
German players react after Neymar’s injury and ahead of their semifinal clash vs Brazil
“Neymar is a sensational player who has shown his class at the World Cup. At a World Cup you always want to measure yourself against the best that is why I would prefer Brazil played with Neymar. The Brazilians will put out a super team even without Neymar.
“Their coaches have a lot of experience of this kind of situation. It’s an honour and a challenge to play against the hosts, but it have would be better to play Brazil in the final. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, to play the hosts in this football-crazy country, I mean that in a positive sense, is something special.”
“They have two coaches in (Felipe) Scolari and (Carlos Alberto) Parreira who have won the title already, they have the home advantage and players with individual class”.
Quotes from Germany-France:
Didier Deschamps, France coach
Although our adventure in Brazil ends here and we’re sad, disappointed and frustrated, we’ll move on. I hope this group of players can play together for a long time. I have a lot of work to do with them, but things are definitely promising. We’ll need to maintain this momentum and quality. Although I’m hurt and disappointed at the moment, I have to remember that there are a lot of positives. Today, there wasn’t much between the two sides. Compared to Germany we were much more inexperienced team and they are more used to playing big international matches like this. I thought we were a little bit timid at first and they scored early. After that, we showed promise. We created chances and could have been more clinical, but Manuel Neuer had a good game. That said they could have easily scored a second when we were pushing forward at the end.
Joachim Low, Germany coach
I think both teams played well defensively today. There weren’t many goalscoring opportunities, which was part of our plan. We didn’t want to give France chances with the quality of strikers they possess. We closed them down well – and that was the key. They did the same against us, because Yohan Cabaye and Paul Pogba are a great screen for the defence and we knew that we had to go wide in order to create chances, which is why I switched Philipp Lahm to the full-back position. France gave everything to try to force the equaliser, but Mats Hummels and Jerome Boateng were excellent and Manuel Neuer did well when called upon. In the last four World Cups we’ve reached the semi-finals. That is a good achievement. We now need to take the next step.
