Germany was the best team in the World Cup from start to finish

The Germans had the deepest team and they deserved to win. 

Germany won the 2014 World Cup final on Sunday evening when 22-year-old Mario Götze chested down a gorgeous ball from 23-year-old André Schürrle and buried a left-footed volley in extra time, giving the team a 1-0 lead it would hold onto.

The goal also illustrated perfectly why Germany deserves to be World Cup champion. 

Both Götze and Schürrle were substitutes in the game, and their ability to generate a moment of brilliance like that off the bench shows just how deep this Germany team was. The team ran 23 men deep, and even when injuries and yellow cards took the team’s starters out, the Germans had an answer.

Take the start of the final. Sami Khedira, one of Germany’s most important midfielders, had to pull out at the last moment with a calf injury. 

In stepped 23-year-old Christoph Kramer and Germany didn’t miss a beat. 

Then, disaster struck again. Kramer took a hard shot to the head and left the game, appearing dazed. 

How many teams in this World Cup could handle the loss of not one, but two key midfielders in a game? Germany subbed in Schürrle, who provided the moment of brilliance on the cross for the goal. 

All that doesn’t include the fact that another German midfielder who might have started, Marco Reus, didn’t even make the trip to Brazil due to injury. It didn’t matter. Germany had stockpiles of midfielders. When one went down, the next stepped up. They kept charging.

 

Germany didn’t have a perfect tournament. The team tied Ghana in the group stage and struggled against a stingy Algeria team in the first game of the knockout round. After that, though, there was nothing stopping them. 

The team found its swagger in its 7-1 dismantling of host-nation Brazil, and from there, you couldn’t doubt Germany deserved to be World Cup champions. That 7-1 game got lost in narrative about Brazil’s downfall and embarrassment, but the real story was that Germany had five different players score those seven goals. 

There was no one star. No one hero. The team was brilliant top to bottom. Jerome Boateng was a monster in the back. Manuel Neuer was brilliant in net, winning the Golden Glove award. Philipp Lahm plugged in wherever the team needed him and played intelligently and tenaciously.

 

Thomas Muller scored goals. Bastian Schweinsteiger bossed the midfield. Schürrle, Götze, Mesut Özil and Toni Kroos provided intelligence and creativity. 

It’s hard to write about a team that doesn’t have one clear-cut star. The narrative isn’t as easy. But Germany proved that depth and resiliency are just as important as individual brilliance in its march to the World Cup. The German players deserved greatness and they found it.