Löw: "I plan on starting Podolski"

The last two games of the year are approaching. The World Champions will take on Gibraltar on Friday (20:45 CET) in Nuremburg and will be expecting nothing less than a win. There should be a “positive end to the year” on Tuesday when the DFB-Team take on European Champions Spain (20:45 CET) in Vigo. DFB.de has summarised the most important quotes from the Germany manager.

Joachim Löw on...

…the situation in the group: We didn’t pick up enough points in October. The euphoria from the World Cup was huge. Then reality began to set in. There are a lot of reasons behind it, but we weren’t good enough to pick up six points against Poland and Ireland.

…Lukas Podolski’s chances of starting: I already plan on starting Lukas. But I also can see that he hasn’t had much match practice this season. Podolski has a good foundation but I’m concerned as to whether he’ll be able to last the 90 minutes. It’s important for him to play regularly. I still have confidence in him. But he needs a good physique because then he’s hard to stop.

…the form of Sami Khedira: Sami Khedira also hasn’t had much match practice. But nevertheless, he is a player that can be used in a variety of ways. We could possibly use him in a more attacking role because I saw in the semi-final against Brazil at the World Cup that he got forward quite often.

…the missing André Schürrle: Schürrle has been ill over the last few weeks with flu. He has tried to train as much as possible. But he said that he is knackered and therefore we decided over the phone that André should stay in London to get better as his health is more important.

…opponents Gibraltar: We expect Gibraltar to be defensive and therefore we won’t play too many defensive players. If we play with tempo and if we have fun then we can achieve our aims, even if Gibraltar are organised at the back. Against Poland (when they lost 7-0), they were only 1-0 down at half-time. But it’s also evident that we have a lot of options going forward.

…the possibility of a new goal scoring record: We haven’t spoken about the record as a team. If the team play like I imagine, then we can set a new record. We want to have a good result and show that we are worthy World Champions. But what’s important is how the team plays and not by how many goals we can win.

…the award in Berlin on Monday: It was a nice event on Monday with the Federal President (the team were awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf at Bellevue Palace.) But the past stays in the past, we must live in the here and now. We realise that we must make progress over the next few months.

…the development of football: Football is constantly being developed and we have to also develop at the same time. We were strong in our ideas at the World Cup as to how we wanted to play football. But we have to incorporate a few things into our game to help us develop, especially in the direction of EURO 2016. We want to be challenging for the title there too. But obviously, we’ll have to qualify first.

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