Quality beats passion

Goal-hungry in attack, confident in defense, tactically superior – there's plenty to like about yesterday's semi-final performance by the German players. Against Brazil, Lahm and company put on their best showing of the tournament.

In fact, when you consider the meaning of the match and the pressure of playing against the hosts it was the best performance ever in Joachim Löw's time as coach. The performance is historically significant too: Brazil has never had seven goals scored against them before in competitve matches. There's never been such a high score in a World Cup semi-final, either. And, the second goal of the match took Miroslav Klose to 16 career World Cup goals, the most scored by any player in the tournament's history.

Ready for the title

When you look at how the game developed it's tempting to start throwing around superlatives but, still, nothing has been won just yet. The hunger felt by the German players and the fans for the country's fourth World Cup title is still there.

Perhaps the biggest compliment that can be given to this golden generation, lead by Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm, is that it was a mature performance. This time the team was alert and showed presence.

During the 2006 World Cup in Germany they just weren't developed enough as a team, and they were beaten by a clever performance by Italy. In 2010, in their close loss against the eventual champions Spain, Germany seemed self-conscious and overwhelmed by their opponent's tiki-taka style of play. Two years later at the European Championships the German team and the coach weren't convinced enough about their own ability. They changed tactics and the team then suffered a frustrating loss against Italy.

The German side has learned from these experiences. Despite the quite poor showings against Ghana and Algeria during the early stages of the tournament, they believed in themselves and they showed their strength on the pitch when it counted. Clearly, a mature performance. It could be argued, that they are now ready for the title. Although the team will go into the final carrying a small burden after their historic win: they now will no longer be able to avoid being tagged as favorites.