Youthful Germany impress Loew

Germany coach Joachim Loew was pleased with his young players despite their 2-1 loss to Australia in Monchengladbach on Tuesday.

Loew made eight changes to the side that thumped Kazakhstan in Saturday’s Euro 2012 qualifier and handed a debut to 21-year-old Borussia Dortmund midfielder Sven Bender.

As well as Bender, Loew was impressed with the contribution of Stuttgart defender Christian Traesch (23), Mainz striker Andre Schuerrle (20) and Borrussia Dortmund left back Marcel Schmelzer (23).

“Judging individual players, I thought that the first half was really good – even regarding the new players,” Loew said.

“On the right, Traesch and Schuerrle combined well. On the left Schmelzer and (midfielder Lukas) Podolski did a good job.”

“All in all we didn’t have any problems as regards defence with Sven Bender and Sebastian Schweinsteiger.”

“If I need to judge the individual performances I was very satisfied with the first half and less so with the second. Surely we could have avoided that goal.”

Bender said he was delighted to have made a good impression on the coach, but was disappointed with the final outcome of this first international.

“I’m happy about the positive feedback on my performance,” Bender said.

“At the end only the team is important, and we lost 2-1. That isn’t great for me or the team.”

“In the first half, you could see that we were playing with a great quality and deserved to go ahead. But in the second half we missed the energy going forward and conceded two goals.”