Poland stalemate offers perfect demonstration of Germany's fatal limitations

As clean sheets go, Germany’s against Poland was pretty scruffy. This is a story that has kept on repeating under Jogi Low. His team is good at sitting back and defending and striking on the break when the opposition allow it, but when Germany try to be proactive, they leave themselves vulnerable. That balance has never been reconciled, even in the World Cup win two years ago.

The two halves were very different. In the first Germany defended, kept things tight, prevented Poland having a shot on goal and had just two chances themselves. The best fell to Mario Gotze, utterly unconvincing as the lone striker in the first half – he is often described as a false nine, which he may be, but when a player is that ineffective it’s hard to know what his role was; it seems just as likely he was trying to play as an orthodox centre-forward but doing so badly – as he headed a Julian Draxler cross over. How Germany must wish for a Miroslav Klose to bury that type of chance with unfussy efficiency.

The second was far more open as Gotze switched to the flank with Thomas Muller moving into the middle. Germany were far more fluent, but they were also far more open. Arkadiusz Milik somehow headed wide from five yards out two minutes into the second half and then, having helped create a chance with a clever dummy, missed his kick as Kamil Grosicki, who regularly got the better of Benedikt Howedes, crossed to the top of the box. Had Jerome Boateng not had such a fine game defending against Robert Lewandowski, Germany could have been in serious trouble.

“We have to be happy with this point,” said Low, apparently unperturbed.

“We did not have many solutions in the attack. The wingers had run a lot. Most of all I am satisfied with the defence. The whole team worked very well. We did not concede too many counter-attacks, what the Polish are strong at normally. They had a very clear chance after half-time but besides that Manuel Neuer did not have to save any shot.”

They had chances of their own, notably a first-time Mesut Ozil effort that was tipped over by Lukasz Fabianksi, but Adam Nawalka, the Poland coach, was surely right when he suggested Poland had been the better side in the second half.

“If you ask me if I was worried about the score, if we were going to concede a goal,” he said, “no I wasn’t. We were controlling what was happening on the pitch. There were periods of the match where Germany had the initiative but we were consciously giving them that space in order to move from pressing to counter-attacks. You could see that in the second half in particular, when we created some very good chances.”

Low acknowledged Germany’s attacking problems. “We could not create too many chances,” he said. “The problem was that the whole of our game in the last third was not very fast. We could not accelerate. We interrupted our attacks, and then there were 10 Polish players behind the ball. It was not what I expected. But you have to admit both sides were very strong defensively. High balls, in the Polish penalty areas, that’s what they want.

"That’s why the strategy was to play Gotze at the beginning, because normally we combine at that end of the pitch but today we simply could not impose our game style.”

The main Polish concern is the lack of goals for Lewandowski but, although he scored 30 in being the Bundesliga top-scorer this season, it would be wrong to judge him merely on goals. His link-up play was excellent, and he also had the misfortune to be up against Boateng, who had a fine game, enhancing his reputation as perhaps the best centre-back in world football at the moment.

“Lewandowski’s performance in every single match is incredibly important for our game plan,” said Nawalka, who enhanced his own reputation as a tactician here. “Even though he hasn’t scored a goal, he is doing tremendous work and he is taking a lot of attention from the defenders. Thanks to that, other players have goalscoring chances.

"Lewandowski is always thinking about the team, both in the physical aspect of the match, and in footballing terms. I’m happy he’s in optimal form and I’m sure in the next matches equally well. Boateng physically and in terms of tactical awareness is a great footballer.”

In terms of personnel, Germany’s problems are no different to those at the last World Cup: the lack of a centre-forward and the lack of a full-back. Then they were solved by moving Philipp Lahm back and reintroducing the 35-year-old Miroslav Klose and by tightening up again at the back, a policy that yielded the 1-0 wins over France in the quarter-final and Argentina in the final. The semi-final against Brazil, of course, brought the 7-1 win but that game perhaps offers a misleading impression.

Brazil were just as complicit in their downfall as England and Argentina had been in leaking four at the previous World Cup, nationalistic hysteria leaving opening them up to a ruthless and well-drilled side.

But however devastating that victory, however much it will echo through history, it was not Germany opening up a resolute side. And neither of those options are available to Germany now.

Poland, having escaped that early Gotze chance were never forced to come out, played the game essentially as they wanted to. Michal Pazdan was excellent at the heart of the Polish defence, a colossus in the air, but it was their shape that really impressed. The two banks of four were all but impeccable and when Germany showed the invention and movement that threatened to generate space within that, they lost their own defensive coherence.

The question has become a familiar one: can Germany score against an opponent that defends well? And if they open up in a way that may bring a goal, does that render them overly vulnerable?

It didn’t matter at the World Cup but it may do so here.