Germany bounced out by Czechs

Germany 1 Czech Republic 2Well a little schadenfreude for everyone in the audience. For the second night running, one of the aristocratic families of European football was shown off the premises. Germany slunk off to a cacophony of noise.

Whistling from their own fans. Chants of auf wiedersehn auf wiedersehn from the Czechs. It was one of those giddy nights of which Lisbon has seen several recently.

When the German sit down to analyse this latest humiliation they won't have the comfort blanket of a conspiracy theory to blame. This was an inside job. A gun. A shot. A wounded German foot. They have only themselves to blame.

They came to Portugal with a weak side, scored two goals in three games, picked up two points and managed to draw with Latvia and lose to a Czech development squad.

The Czechs, by contrast, didn't so much exit the stadium last night as float out of it. Nine points from three games in a group which promised far, far less.

Last night, they even had the luxury of relative indifference. To prove the point they selected a side of such resoundingly second-string players that the more ambitious among their number would have felt entitled to go and knock on the manager's door and demand to know why they had been picked in such company. The aggregate number of international goals scored by the starting 11 last night was 12.

So no Milan Baros, Pavel Nedved, Karel Poborsky, Jan Koller, Tomas Rosicky or Vladimir Smicer. The Czechs looked like a reality TV experiment. Take 11 strangers introduce them and make them play Germany at football! They didn't need to be but they were up for it. They signified this when they created the best chance of the opening exchanges when Roman Tyce had a free-kick from the left which Vratislav Lokvenc almost bundled past Oliver Kahn.

What was baffling about the first half was the sense of contentment the Germans exuded. They strolled towards the Czech's, stroking the ball around. They looked like rich people whose credit card has been declined. They lounged and postured as if this embarrassing position was all the fault of some bizarre misunderstanding which would be sorted out soon. And little warning darts kept whizzing past their ears. Jaroslav Plasil, a neat midfielder who plays his football in France, stretched his legs a couple of times and nonchalantly graced past three or four German defenders.

The only person hearing alarm bells was Michael Ballack. The Bayern player thundered around the middle corridor looking for weaknesses, any fissures at all. On 19 minutes he was on to something.

First a cracking shot deflected off David Rozenhal in the Czech defence and looped dangerously up over goalkeeper Jaromir Blazek. It went for a corner.

The Czechs were in the business of tidying the house after the corner when Martin Jiranek was dispossessed by Bernd Schneider. He passed low to Bastian Schweinsteiger who knocked it back in obedience to Ballack. Thump! A fine shot curled into the top corner.

That was it though. The Germans seemed to think their work had been done in that minute of creativity. Nine minutes later, reality sledgehammered them. Marek Heinz was toppled running at the German box. He took the free himself. A sublime effort placed right where the postage stamp should go.

The second half began like the first with Lokvenc again getting through on Kahn and once more seeing a bundled shot smothered by the German. For 20 minutes or so after that, though, the Germans found the fire in their bellies. Ballack led the charge of course. A header saved on 56 minutes. A long-range drive saved minutes later.

And then the sequence which climaxed all German effort for the evening. Philipp Lahm coming down the left driving the ball across Ballack who thumped a shot off the Czech post. Schneider gleefully pounced on the rebound which went sailing towards an empty net only for Blazek to materialise from thin air and knock it away for a corner. The Germans were stunned. The Czech's took a break for water and smelling salts.

A few minutes later from a corner kick the Germans created similar chaos and made nothing of it. Not one but two scrambled attempts cleared off the goal-line on this occasion. The beauty though of playing your B squad is the subs you can bring on.

There was something cheering about the sight of first Baros and then Poborsky being warmed up. Reinforcements don't come made to a higher calibre.

With a quarter of an hour to go a draw was looking more and more likely. The Czechs made the odd desultory break for freedom but their ambitious passing game of the first half had been shredded by tiredness.

One such escape saw the ball reach Baros. His job now was to hold the ball up for as long as possible while the defence filled their lungs with oxygen. Instead, he teased Jens Nowotny and Christian Woerns twisting himself this way and that. He made an effort to beat Kahn but the ball bounced back as if off a barn door. Baros pounced on the loose opportunity and slotted it home.

And that was it. Nothing but time to be played out. Another gripping chapter closes.