BRISBANE (Reuters) – Germany coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg asked for time to analyse the reasons behind her team’s shock departure from the Women’s World Cup after Thursday’s 1-1 draw with South Korea saw the twice champions make a group stage exit for the first time.
The draw meant the Germans, who needed to win at Brisbane’s Lang Park to be sure of progressing, finished third in Group H behind winners Colombia and surprise qualifiers Morocco after the African side picked up a 1-0 win in Perth.
Germany, winners of the title in 2003 and 2007, had never gone out earlier than the quarter-finals in their eight previous appearances at the tournament, but now join Brazil and Canada among the fancied nations to be going home early.
“At the end of the day, the score matters in a football game, and the points, and we didn’t score enough,” said Voss-Tecklenburg.
“We wanted to win today, we did not do so. And yes, of course we had chances but all in all unfortunately we didn’t score the goal that we would have needed.
“We were nervous when we started the game and I think that showed. This is why Korea Republic took the lead.
“We have not qualified and we have to deal with it. We did not find our game as we wanted to.”
The Koreans dominated the opening exchanges and saw Casey Phair’s second-minute shot pushed onto the post by goalkeeper Merle Frohms before Cho So-hyun gave her side the lead four minutes later with a cool first-time finish.
Alexandra Popp pulled the Germans level three minutes before halftime with a header but, for all their effort, the Europeans were unable to find the winner needed, with Popp seeing a second effort ruled out for offside and another hit the crossbar.
“We did get chances, we tried a lot,” said Voss-Tecklenburg. “We are in charge, we are responsible for this. However, I do need a little time to analyse this and to discuss it.
“We do need to analyse everything, looking back at the matches, and we need to do that as a team and need to work out how we move into the future. This is a historically poor result.
“We’ve got to face up to that, there’s no way to talk over it and gloss over it. It means that we need to discuss it very constructively and productively in all areas, what happened and that’s what we’ll do.”
(Reporting by Michael Church, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
