Whilst we are guaranteed Rio is set to go green for next years St Patricks Day, on the international soccer front it remains to be seen whether it will be awash with green in two years time for the World Cup as Irelands world cup ambitions had a setback this weekend. Last Friday night at 7:45pm all eyes were on Dublins Aviva stadium as the boys in green took on Germany in their second world cup qualifier match on the road to Rio 2014. Having opened up their world cup qualifier campaign with a win away to Kazakhstan they faced stiff competition in one of soccers superpowers Germany who were on a 12 match unbeaten streak in qualifying matches dating back to October 2007.
Unfortunately with the retirement of our some of our main stars Shay Given and Damien Duff as well as injuries to a number of other stars including Robbie Keane, Sean St. Ledger, Richard Dunne, Glen Whelan, James McClean and Kevin Doyle the team that faced the mighty Germans were quite depleted and it seemed beforehand to be huge task to get a result against the strong Teutonic football squad. And so it proved to be as a masterful and powerful display of football from the German side completely overpowered our team with the final score of 6-1 leading to one of our worst defeats at home.
Despite the disappointing result fans were treated to a display of talent as the Germans showed the world exactly why they have become one of the world cup favourites over the past few years. Whilst for us Irish fans it was a devastating result at least we could find joy in being able to see an exciting German soccer team in action as they completely dominated play easily strolling to victory with 4 goals coming in the second half courtesy of Mesut Ozil, Miroslav Klose and Toni Kroos to compliment two earlier ones from Marco Ruess. Defeated for now Ireland can take consolation in our never say die attitude even scoring a consolation goal in the 91st minute against a German team coming to the height of its powers. Despite the result we are still in with a chance to qualify for Rio in our next few group matches.