Euro 2008 Day 17(Semifinal 1): Blackouts, Comebacks and the effect of the "22 men play football and Germany always win" rule

This game is so big, it even made the headlines in the USA (New York Times article). I failed to grasp any excitement on the street today although there were quite a few people dressed in jerseys of either Germany or Turkey. The radio was reporting about the game the whole day, all of Germany's newspapers were writing about it, I guess the TV was all over it as well. This will be huge. I wonder if there is a single person out on the street tonight. I would really like to see this, but I won't be leaving my place in front of my television set.

Germany vs Turkey 3-2 (Semifinal 1)
Hilarious, ridiculous, absolutely not from this world. What a game, what a chaos. Let's wrap things up a little bit.
Germany started poorly, absolutely no self-confidence, this was a huge step back from the boost they had against Portugal. Turkey was in complete control and it was only fitting they went ahead 1-0 after some chaos in the German defense. Philipp Lahm, who played a poor game most of the time, was outplayed on the Turkish wing, the header or shot hit the crossbar and then Ugur made a complete fool out of Arne Friederich and Jens Lehmann, the latter looking like a clown trying to catch a hot kettle. But Germany responded quickly. Bastian Schweinsteiger seems to have found his groove and he was responsible for the equalizer only 4 minutes later. With this - and a bloody fight head on between Sabri and Simon Rolfes as well as a highly disputed tackle against Lahm in the Turkish penalty box - the game went into the half time break.
And while the action on the pitch was mostly not worth mentioning for most of the second half the off pitch action was hilarious. Numerous blackouts, both on TV and radio caused by a thunderstorm over Vienna where the media centre is located, turned this into a guessing game. When the picture came back the second time it was just right in time for Germany's second goal, a header by Klose and some really poor goalkeeping by Rüstü. But the Turkish team hadn't earned their reputation as Europe's comeback kids for nothing. They equalized only 8 minutes later with a goal by Semih after a wonderful cross by Sabri, who made Lahm look like a schoolboy on the right side. Speaking about Philipp Lahm, he had his moment in the last minute of offical play when he scored the winning goal after a brilliant one-two pass on the right side. This will send this country into a huge party and I hope that both of the supporters will join into one huge festival of football. Turkey has every reasion to hold their heads up high as they have been the better team over most of the match. Had they won this no one in the German team would have had the right to complain.

It was interesting to watch this at home again as the reactions in the apartments all around my flat could be heard very clearly. In the first half the cheers were a little surpressed and with every blackout the moaning and cursing got louder. When the 3-2 was scored a huge roar erupted which almost sounded like a stadium cheering for their home team. This wasn't the high class football displayed by teams like Russia, Spain or The Netherlands, this was the meeting of two teams who had shown enormous willpower in the tournament. Not a beautiful sight, but exciting nonetheless.

Great comment on the BBC's live blogging site (found on allesaussersport.de):
"If there’s one team that knows more about winning a match in the last minute than Turkey, it’s Germany. Master v apprentice."
That sums it up brilliantly.