In the end, everything looked slightly better for Germany when the goals of Jule Brand and Lea Sch\u00fcller saw them past tournament debutants. But while the victory was deserved and the performance improved in the course of the game, it was not quite the perfect start.<\/p>\n
The eight-time champions were wasteful in front of the goal and were not quite convincing in the back. A ruthless side as Poland may have received some sloppy German mistakes. Sweden and Denmark, Germany’s other opponents of the group phase, may not be so charitable.<\/p>\n
But perhaps more important, captain Giulia Gwinn left the field in tears in the first half after she seemed to hurt her knee while making a decisive tackle on Poland’s productive striker Ewa Pajor. Gwinn immediately seemed to know that she was in trouble. The 26-year-old Bayern Munich defender has already suffered two injuries to the front cruciate ligament (ACL), from which she missed the last World Cup 2023.<\/p>\n
Coach Christian W\u00fcck called it a "bitter price" to pay for the victory and said the players gave Gwinn a "big hug" at half-time. "If you torn a cruciate ligament twice and then injure your knee again, you are shocked at first," continued W\u00fcck. "We don’t want to speculate." The trainer confirmed that Gwinn will have an MRI tomorrow to determine the extent of the damage.<\/p>\n
Gwinn was the face of this squad under construction, and Germany now needed another player to step up: enter Jule Brand. The wing player of Wolfsburg had never achieved a tournament goal in 10 games at the World Cup and in Euros, but climbed into the house to reach an excellent strike in the back corner to give her for 52 minutes.<\/p>\n
Lea Sch\u00fcller finally headed a second 14 minutes later to give Germany a cushion after Christian W\u00fcck’s side wasted a number of opportunities. Although Poland showed lightning, mainly by the sharpness of the needle, Germany had done enough. The first big tournament goal of Brand and Sch\u00fcller, Germany’s striker who comes to the brand early, are both important for a German team that is still looking for a new identity after the early exit in 2023, and the resignation of a series of key players.<\/p>\n
While Brand has been an integral part of the national team for some time, the 22-year-old has not quite experienced the potential that she mentioned as the opening winner of the Golden Girl, an award that was awarded to the best young female player in world football in 2022. Sch\u00fcller has an extraordinary goal record for Germany, 53 in 76 games. Nevertheless, the striker was always seen as a backup for Popp. Sch\u00fcller was the top scorer in Euro qualifying, scored four in her last three German games and achieved a hat trick in the German Cup final in May. She is a striker in shape and might have had more on Friday.<\/p>\n
While the captain of a new look is waiting nervously for medical tests, some of their teammates have made considerable progress out of their shadows. Denmark expects on Tuesday. The German team will look to build on their victory and find a new identity without their injured captain, with Sch\u00fcller and Brand leading the charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Germany’s Victory Marred by Injury Concerns In the end, everything looked slightly better for Germany when the goals of Jule Brand and Lea Sch\u00fcller saw them past tournament debutants. But while the victory was deserved and the performance improved in the course of the game, it was not quite the perfect start. A Wasteful Performance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15684,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15682\/revisions\/15684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}