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Frustrating night
Jurgen Klinsmann expressed his sympathy for Romelu Lukaku after the striker missed a number of good chances as Belgium crashed out of the World Cup.
Following an injury-hit start to the season with Inter Milan, Roberto Martinez took a gamble by including the Chelsea flop in his 26-man squad for Qatar.
The on-loan forward, 29, was a late sub as the Red Devils lost their second game of the tournament 2-0 to Morocco.
He was introduced at half-time last night but failed to find the net as a goalless draw against Croatia resulted in Martinez’s side finishing third in Group F.
Former Germany boss Klinsmann, who also saw his countrymen fail to reach the knockout phase, said: “It’s highly frustrating for Romelu, who I’m big fan of — I’m an Inter Milan fan.
“When you go into a World Cup, everything needs to happen in a positive way. You need to have a hungry squad, you need to have support from all over, especially from your home crowd, from your home people, from your media.
“You need to have them physically prepared to the extreme, to perfection, with no injuries. All those things need to be in place in order to go far in a World Cup.
“If these things are out of balance, if it’s injuries, or lack of preparation, or lack of fitness, or lack of mental preparation for the tournament, which is the first tournament ever in the Middle East, all these things matter.
“If it’s unbalanced, you risk going home early. And that’s what happened to Germany, Belgium and Denmark.”
Lukaku was distraught at full-time and had to be consoled by assistant coach Thierry Henry after punching the dugout in frustration.
It’s good to talk
Jens Lehmann has suggested Germany’s failure at the World Cup was down to a lack of communication.
Lehmann and his fellow countrymen watched in horror last night as a 4-2 victory over Costa Rica was not enough to send Hansi Flick’s side into the knockout phase thanks to Japan’s shock victory over Spain.
Reflecting on his nation’s Group E campaign, which began with a 2-1 defeat to the Japanese, the ex-Germany and Arsenal star, 53, said: “I think the challenge for the next years for coaches and players is to communicate better, to coach on the pitch.
“So you need to have coaches who can coach while the game is running and to coach their own players how to organise.
“At the end of the day, it has nothing to do with formations when you concede goals. You just need to do something with the organisation, being compact — and these are the things that are being neglected.
“The German team, unfortunately, made a gesture before the first game when they muted their mouths in the team photo. And that’s kind of a symbol for what they do because they don’t talk — and talking is very important in coaching and on the pitch.
“There were some distractions about all the things going in Qatar — human rights and things like that. And the Germans right now they are hyper-critical because they think they always have to deal with other people’s problems.
“We need to focus on the tournament, we need to focus on performing really well, because there are millions of fans like myself and we were expecting a little more than getting knocked for the second time in a row.”
