German National Football Team Ready to Break U.S. Hearts

After that last game against Portugal I confess I'm interested in tomorrow's game. Unfortunately for the U.S., it's gonna be brutal.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Deep Germany Ready to Break U.S. Hearts: U.S. Manager Klinsmann, Players Prepared For Clash":

Gleeful members of the U.S. soccer bandwagon: Brace yourselves for a bucket of cold water called Germany.

Those ever-disciplined lads in white and black have a way of crushing supposedly ascendant soccer nations. They care little about whether their opponent is a host nation, a higher-ranked favorite or a big lovable puppy enjoying its first love affair with the game.

Germany breaks hearts.

"The expectations are simple: They've always got to win it," U.S. head coach and former German superstar Jurgen Klinsmann said Tuesday before training. "They live with that; they get along with that, so they can embrace those expectations within the inner circle as well. And that's how they prepare and start the tournament, and go from game to game. (See a profile of the German team.)

"So their consistency is really something that they're really known for. Obviously their spirit is always going into the last second of the game, to turn things around, fighting until the last moment."

There is consistency in sports and then there is Die Mannschaft, as the team is known...

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