After Jerome Boateng’s early opener, Mesut Ozil had a 13th-minute penalty saved before Draxler intervened with an assist and a goal to set the world champions up for a last-eight date with Italy or Spain.
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It may, however, take far more than that for Wolfsburg to part with a player who is not 23 until September and has four years left on his contract, especially after his display on Sunday. “We will have to improve to win the tournament”, said Loew.
Germany will play either Spain or Italy in the last eight next Saturday.
“I am sleeping well”. “Both sides are among the favourites”.
Low told a news conference: “Of course, like any other side, we’ve had our problems getting into the tournament because there are a lot of tactics in the group stage as teams can go through with three points”.
“It’s a pity (to go out) but when we look at what we have done, we can be proud of ourselves and happy about what we achieved”. Our task now will be more hard and we can not leave our opponents any spaces because teams will punish us.
Germany flexed its muscles Sunday as it cruised into the quarterfinals of Euro 2016 with a comfortable 3-0 win over Slovakia.
Slovakia will not give Germany as much space as they had in the 1-0 defeat of Northern Ireland, Loew said, drawing parallels with group opponents Poland as a counter-attacking side, with whom Germany drew 0-0.
“I don’t think Germany will press us as deep as England did at the end of the match but obviously we need a solid defence because that’s the only way to get a solid result”, Kozak said. “That has been clear for years now”, he said.
“The defence was excellent today”.
Germany have scored just three times at Euro 2016 and Hector has admitted they could be doing better in attack.
“I am happy that his calf was okay”.
Mario Gomez and Julian Draxler added goals of their own to a fine team performance from Joachim Low’s side, though Boateng was given a standing ovation when replaced by Benedikt Howedes in the second half. Germany slowing and sitting back a bit now, but Slovakia have been restricted to these sort of pot-shots that Neuer is covering easily.
The penalty was awarded after Slovakia captain Martin Skrtel brought down Germany striker Mario Gomez in the area.
13′ – Penalty to Germany!
The miss did nothing to halt Germany’s momentum, though, and it remained one-way traffic.
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Jan Durica sent a powerful effort towards the bottom corner as Slovakia looked to respond five minutes later, but the ball just missed the post as Germany kept their clean sheet in tact approaching the final 20 minutes.
