Germany has the oldest team in the tournament and its players were looking like it. In the 92-degree heat, under a cloudless sky, Mexico was having the run of this second-round match, and the Germans were walking.
German players Lothar Matthaeus, Juergen Klinsmann and Oliver Bierhoff pulled out their shirt tails to get a little relief but there was none. The Mexicans had gone ahead on Luis Hernandez’ fourth goal of the World Cup 2 minutes into the second half. Only two stunning saves in a few seconds by otherwise shaky German goalie Andreas Koepke kept the lead from becoming two in the 62nd minute.
Then the Germans reached into their collective psyche and found what they always do, a resolve that is translated into action and is best expressed by a German word that does not translate well.
It is willenskraft, the formidable combination of will and skill. It is the notion, as German coach Berti Vogts put it, “that if you want to win, you will.”
The Germans did Monday at Mosson Stadium, beating Mexico 2-1 on goals from their redoubtable strikers, Klinsmann and Bierhoff, in the final 16 minutes of the match. Each now has three goals in the tournament.
Both German scores Monday came after Vogts put his third star attacker, Ulf Kirsten, into the game. Kirsten’s was the last of three exceptional passes that put the ball on Bierhoff’s head for the winning goal.
“We keep hearing about how old we are and we laugh about it,” said Klinsmann, 33, a member of Germany’s 1990 world champions. “You saw today who was running more at the end–the younger ones or the older ones?”
Germany, a finalist in five of the last eight World Cups, goes on to a quarterfinal Saturday in Lyon against the winner of Tuesday’s Romania-Croatia match. Mexico goes home having played far better than even its most optimistic supporters might have imagined.
“We weren’t given a chance, but give us the ball and we will play against anyone,” said Mexican striker Francisco Palencia.
This was the only one of its four matches in which Mexico scored the first goal. It had rallied for a 3-1 victory and a pair of 2-2 ties in the first round. This was the third straight match in which Germany, a three-time World Cup winner, failed to score in the first half.
“Maybe we have to get behind to start attacking and to play more fancifully,” said Bierhoff, the leading scorer in the Italian league this season.
Bierhoff could have made Germany’s task easier if he hadn’t muffed a scoring chance in the 40th minute, when passes from Thomas Haessler and Klinsmann gave him a header at an open corner. His shot hit the crossbar.
Hernandez dribbled past two German defenders before drilling home the shot that put Mexico ahead 1-0 in the 47th minute of a match that got better and better as time passed.
“I have played Mexico many times,” Vogts said, “and I have never seen a Mexican team play with such passion.”
In the 62nd minute, after Jesus Arellano shook four German defenders, Matthaeus kicked the ball free but right toward his goal. Koepke got a hand on it, but it was the goalpost that made the critical part of the save. The rebound came to Hernandez, who forced the goalie to make another tough stop.
Kirsten, the leading scorer in the Bundesliga, entered the game in the 74th minute. Four minutes later, Mexican defender Raul Lara failed to clear a pass from Dietmar Hamann, and Klinsmann immediately pounded the loose ball past Jorge Campos.
The winning play began when Christian Ziege stripped the ball from Arellano deep in the German end. Ziege moved it forward to Matthaeus, who struck a hooking, 30-yard pass to the left, where Michael Tarnat hardly needed to move to play it. Tarnat passed the ball 30 yards right to Kirsten, who took it with his back to the goal and lobbed it toward Bierhoff, who outjumped Lara and headed it home in the 89th minute.
“We played according to our strengths,” Klinsmann said. “They are our fighting spirit and our willingness to keep going and going for 90 minutes.
“You have to be physically prepared for such effort, especially in this heat. We are not Brazil, we are not a Latin American team. We do not play with flair but with directness. By fighting so much, we try to instill fear in the other team.”
Both these teams proved fearless. Hernandez would get one final scoring chance, in the 92nd minute, but his header caused Koepke no problems. The game ended two minutes later, and then Tarnat and teammate Christian Woerns finally gave in, each falling prostrate on the field and lying there. Even willenskraft has its limits.
