Germany will be looking to rediscover the form that won the tournament back in 2009, when they face Serbia on Wednesday night in the European Under-21 Championship.
That championship winning team was practically a blueprint for the side that lifted the World Cup a little under a year ago in Brazil – featuring the likes of Mesut Ozil, Manuel Neuer, Mats Hummels and Sami Khedira.
Four years on from a memorable 4-0 win over England’s under-21s in the final in Stockholm, Germany’s starlets had a very different experience, crashing out in the group stages – something they will no doubt be keen to atone for this time.
Going into this year’s tournament in the Czech Republic, there are certainly fewer rising stars than in past squads, but prospects such as Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Max Meyer and Kevin Volland are already well-known names and have ample experience at the highest level.
Die Mannschaft will face a gutsy Serbian outfit which snuck into this year’s competition with a surprising play-off victory against Spain and Juventus’ Alvaro Morata.
This will be only the second ever meeting between the two under-21 sides, with the last encounter coming in 2006, when Serbia was still unified with Montenegro. A sole effort from Eugen Polanski was enough to earn Germany the spoils that day.
The Serbians do not boast any well-known faces like their opponents, with the vast majority of the squad either still plying their trade domestically, or in on the fringes of foreign teams’ squads.
Cordoba’s Aleksandar Pantic and Borussia Dortmund’s Milos Josic may be the closest thing the Orlovi have to top level players.
Lazar Markovic, Matija Nastasic and top scorer Aleksandar Mitrovic are all young enough to have participated for Serbia, but all three are regulars in the senior team and were unavailable to coach Mladen Dodic.
That lack of experience and quality has not held back the Serbs however. Along with their upset against the Spanish, Dodic’s team have also defeated Italy and Belgium in the last year.
Horst Hrubesch’s young Germans have displayed some utterly imperious form in the same period, at one point having a five game winning streak where they scored 18 and conceded only one against bitter rivals and neighbours, the Netherlands.
Meyer did not travel to Hrubesch’s pre-tournament training camp in Austria after succumbing to a cold, while Ter Stegen was occupied with the Champions League final for Barcelona. Both are expected to be available on Wednesday, but Bayer Leverkusen’s Bernd Leno might be the preferred option in goal anyway.
Dodic was also left without some players during his preparations, as Southampton’s Filip Djuricic was called up to the senior side to face Denmark on Saturday, while Filip Kostic and Nikola Stojiljkovic both pulled out the squad with injuries, replaced by Aleksandar Cavric and Nikola Trujic replacing them.
Form Guide: Germany (L-D-D-W-W), Serbia (W-L-W-D-W)
Expected Starting XIs
Germany: Ter Stegen; Korb, Ginter, Knoche, Günter, Leitner, Can, Bittencourt, Meyer, Vollen, Hofmann
Serbia: Dmitrovic; Veljkovic, Petrovic, Cirkovic, Jojic, Kovacevic, Radoja, Causic, Srnic, Pesic, Cavric
