DPA<\/p>\n
Chicago <\/p>\n
Germany are wasting no time in their aim to play a successful World Cup, possibly with a starting XI that no one could have foreseen just a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
The team went on an evening stroll on the shore of Lake Michigan to stretch the tired legs shortly after their arrival in Chicago on Tuesday and a first training session is set for later Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Germany play final tune-up match against the US team on Saturday at Chicago\u2019s Soldier Field, where they will be aiming for a ninth straight win to enter the tournament they start on June 14 in Houston against Cura\u00e7ao with the best possible mindset.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it will be a very emotional match. It\u2019s a matter of soaking up the atmosphere and really getting into the tournament,\u201d coach Julian Nagelsmann said of the US match.<\/p>\n
Nagelsmann must decide whether recalled goalkeeper Manuel Neuer is fit to play on Saturday in the wake of a calf injury, and whether Kai Havertz will start up front a week after losing the Champions League final with Arsenal. Havertz only joined the squad on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
A last-minute shake-up in the starting line-up appears to be in the making, which could not have been expected after the qualifying campaign in autumn or even after the March friendlies.<\/p>\n
Neuer has already been declared first choice in his return from international retirement when the squad was announced, which was bad news for Oliver Baumann.<\/p>\n
And left back Nathaniel Brown, teen-aged forward Lennart Karl and midfielder Felix Nmecha have impressed in such a way for their clubs and in Sunday\u2019s 4-0 against Finland that they could be World Cup starters instead of David Raum, Leroy San\u00e9 and Leon Goretzka.<\/p>\n
It was a situation Nagelsmann originally wanted to avoid by having clearly defined roles for the players in an effort to curb any potential discontent.<\/p>\n
Nagelsmann said these roles dominated media coverage over the past weeks and months but he insisted that they merely described the situation at the time – and were subject to change.<\/p>\n
In this respect, it will be the days in Chicago that will point the way to the World Cup for the four-time champions who went out in the group stage at the last two editions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DPA Chicago Germany are wasting no time in their aim to play a successful World Cup, possibly with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2757,29125,1696,5,29122,29123,5209,29124,904],"class_list":["post-29968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-as","tag-chicago","tag-for","tag-germany","tag-jet","tag-lag","tag-no","tag-reach","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}