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#3 A much open start to the second half; sans, the final touch
While the first forty-five minutes were much focused on South Korea’s reserved approach against Germany’s composed passing play, the second half-initiated with an exciting manner for both the teams. Korea looked to have broken down the shackles, as they countered the play with much more precision and intent. They were able to outrun the German midfield, a ploy that was well exploited by the Mexicans in their first match of the tournament.
On one occasion, Spurs’ star man Son-Heung Min managed to round Manuel Neuer but then could not get the ball back to an appropriate angle to shoot at the goal. Son was later booked for simulation after he went down by a challenge from Reus inside the box. The most interesting aspect was the amount of space that the Koreans were able to fathom during these counter attacks as Sami Khedira was substituted in favour of Mario Gomez.
This left Toni Kroos as the sole midfielder, but Kroos had to push ahead in search of incisive passes too and that left the whole centre of the park vacated by the Germans. The Koreans took good advantage of this space, as their counter-attacks were almost too quick but Sule managed to keep a calm head to thwart those dangers for some time.
South Korea were very quick and fleet-footed, leaving the Germans flabbergasted with the swiftness in their transition of play. Despite their constant threats, the finishing touch was missing in their play and that must have frustrated the team as they had managed to dominate Germany for some period of time.
Korea’s slick counter-attacks meant that Germany did not enjoy the same time on the ball as they did in the first half, and hence they were much hassled while making the passes in the final third. Kimmich and Ozil messed up a couple of promising one-twos near the box that could have led to potential shots on target too. Korea did well to jump on those loose balls and managed to provide some tough competition to Low’s men.
