Germany-Spain: A Soccer Game Turned Chess Match

There’s a Spanish saying, “the people who think you play football with your feet are the same people who think you play chess with your hands.”

In Sunday’s 1-1 draw between Germany and Spain, Luis Enrique and Hansi Flick treated fans to a tactical chess match, one that both overrode and was made possible by the supreme individual quality of players like Pedri, Ilkay Gundogan, Jamal Musiala, Sergio Busquets, and Leroy Sane.

This game had so many moves and countermoves that—like chess—it was more intellectual exercise than a sporting contest. Moreover, it pitted two scholars against one another: The professorial but overly sensual Spaniards, with their major in possession and minor in counter-pressing, and the implacably muscular Germans who majored in counter-pressing and minored in possession.

Instead of a riveting intellectual debate, the game was more like two blowhards repeating the same ideas repeatedly with just slightly different SAT words thrown into their dissertations.

Much like a scholarly debate or a chess match, this game, while certainly reflecting the human mind’s complexity and glory, was still boring.

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Enrique lined up Spain with the same starting eleven he fielded against Costa Rica, except for Dani Carvajal replacing Azpilicueta at right back.

Germany predictably rejiggered its lineup after its defeat to Japan. Flick set up a 4-2-3-1, with Thilo Kehrer at right back and Niklas Süle moving to center back. In midfield, Leon Goretzka joined Joshua Kimmich as a pivot, with Gundogan and Thomas Müller moving up in the lineup to fill the number ten and nine roles, respectively.

Both teams felt each other out to start the game, with the Spanish backline and midfield holding the ball as the Germans gauged their opponent before launching their press.

In the sixth minute, Dani Olmo forced Manuel Neuer into a save that deflected off the crossbar after Spain’s counter-press led to yet another ball recovery at the game’s outset.

Germany showed its hand early, too, as a Gundogan flick found a streaking Goretzka running into the space behind the Spanish midfield line, only for him to delay his pass to Serge Gnabry until the winger was offsides. Gnabry would again be involved in the 24th minute after a triple combination between Germany’s savviest playmakers—Musiala, Müller, and Gundogan—but the winger’s shot went wide this time.

Then, just as the game was becoming a counter-pressing competition, Busquets offered a masterclass in the invisible art of tempo-setting as he slowed the game down and gave the Spaniards a chance to breathe.

With the aging midfielder/matchstick impersonator ensuring the game unfolded per Spain’s preferences, La Roja created a succession of chances after Olmo got in behind twice from long balls over the top. Ferran Torres was offsides on the first chance, and the second turned into a corner for another Torres shot.

In the 39th minute, the game appeared to fulfill the excitement it promised when Antonio Rüdiger scored a header from a Joshua Kimmich freekick. But the goal was ruled out for offsides in the first example of the Spaniards’ perfectly executed set-piece offside trap. It was a microcosm of their game as a whole, in which they managed to make everything appear simple by sheer virtue of their teamwork.  

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The second half started much as the first did: Spain kept the ball and Germany’s conditioning coach eyed a raise since his players outran the Spanish ball movement. In this part of the game, Spain seemed to make the ball arrive into any open space perfectly on schedule with the player who would eventually occupy it.  

To Flick’s credit, it only took him ten minutes into this half until he divined the perfect time to advance his midfielders to the Spanish defensive line to discombobulate their build-up play. 

Musiala pressed Unai Simón, who rushed a pass to a back-to-goal Pedri on the edge of the box, only for him to be met with a Kimmich tackle that made him hit the ground butt-first and slide like he was on a toboggan. The ball fell to Gundogan, who set up Kimmich for a shot in the middle of the box, forcing a full-stretch save from Simón. 

Despite that clear chance, Spain would strike first in the 61st minute, with Olmo again involved on the left. He rewarded a Jordi Alba overlap, and the fullback played a low, taught cross to the front post for the substitute Alvaro Morata who, without slowing down even an iota, beat Neuer with the outside of his boot. 

In the 70th minute, Flick made a triple substitution that would change the game—Leroy Sane for Gundogan, Niclas Füllkrug for 33-year-old Müller, and Lukas Klosterman for the booked Thilo Kehrer. Two minutes later, Füllkrug cut the front post to meet a Musiala cross that Rodri blocked. 

But it was Sane—his flawless ball control, paired with his newly-honed awareness—that torpedoed Spain’s finely tuned collective positioning. He would beat his defender every time and inevitably force Spain to scramble as they readjusted. 

In the 73rd minute, Sane set up Musiala one-on-one with Simón after riding a challenge from Alba and playing him through behind the defense. It should have been Musiala’s definitive arrival to world football, scoring the equalizer against Spain to revitalize Germany’s World Cup campaign. Instead, he shot with power instead of accuracy, and Simón proffered an eye-catching reflex save. 

Ten minutes later, he would get the ball in the same position on the right after a Sane through ball between three Spanish players. This time Füllkrug appeared out of nowhere, shoved Musiala aside, and crushed the ball into the top corner himself. Germany equalized, and Musiala got a quick lesson in both finishing and sports media after Füllkrug made the headlines even though he was the best player in the game.   

Sane seemed destined to break the deadlock when he got a pass from Nico Schlotterbeck on the left-hand side for a one-on-one with Simón. The 95th-minute winner would have been his definitive arrival at the World Cup. Instead, Sane rounded the keeper and…simply kept running. Not toward the goal but straight toward the touchline. 

When he finally realized the field wasn’t boundless, he attempted a cut back which Rodri promptly hoofed away. It was one of the strangest missed chances fans will ever see because the player seemed to decide not to turn it into a chance. 

So ended the highest-quality game of the World Cup so far with an anticlimactic moment of pure befuddlement. In football—like in chess—even the most careful strategic planning doesn’t stand a chance against that all too human phenomenon: the brain fart.