Schweinsteiger, der Albtraum der portugiesischen Mannschaft

Schweinsteiger, the nightmare of the Portuguese Team

In World Cup 2006, Schweinsteiger was responsible for Germany's victory over Portugal scoring a 3 goals (one was deflected from a Portuguese defender). Tonight Schweinsteiger, or Schweini (as the German girls would call him), booked a place for Germany in the semi-finals! 1 chio goal and 2 wonderful free kicks to Klose and Ballack was all that sealed the Portuguese fate in the Euro 2008 campaign. Of course the Portuguese played very well too, especially the fast running Nani who almost cost Germany's game.

Now as I type this entry, the cars downstairs are horning like mad and shouting "Schweinsteig", which by the way, Schwein means pig, and steiger means climber, or riser. And here's to the guy who climb pigs

It was a great game today, a great idea to take Gomez out of the game. Frankly his Euro 2008 campaign has been crappy although he played very well in the Bundesliga for Stuttgart. The formation was tactical and flanks were good. But there is still a need to improve on their defence, the Germans don't seem to know how to run back quickly to guard their turf after an unsuccessful attack.

The semi final against either Turkey or Croatia will be a showdown. Against Turkey it will be because there are about 5 million Turks living in Germany (the biggest immigrant group in Germany), and also the area which I live in Mannheim is a Turkish district (but I won't be in Mannheim anyway). Against Croatia it will be a bigger showdown because of how the Germans screwed up in the quarter-final qualifiers against the Croatians.

Anyway I can forsee that I will have a difficult time sleeping tonight with all the noise going on. If only Ying and PY were here today instead of arriving tomorrow at 5am, I would not have to go to bed early and wake up early to pick them up, we'd definitely be on the streets partying now.

On a sad note, before the match started, I was having a mini grill by the Rhine river with Claire. Our last meeting. Felt very sad cos I won't be seeing her again. and I can say she's the first serious French friend that I ever made from working together for the International Marketing project. Her words, "we got stronger from the groupwork!" and she insisted that I must visit her next year in France or if she goes to Asia.