Jerome Boateng has hit out at the Germany supporters who booed their side during the 1-0 friendly defeat of Chile in Stuttgart on Wednesday.
• Uersfeld: Germany win, but Chile impress
Joachim Loew’s men were lucky to escape with a victory at the Gottlieb-Daimler Stadion, with Mario Goetze’s first-half goal proving the difference.
The lacklustre display led the home fans to jeer their team, with the capacity crowd growing impatient as the clock ticked down, while during the second half, whistles could be heard. They were particularly loud when Mesut Ozil walked off the field to be replaced by debutant Matthias Ginter two minutes from time.
The nerve of it! You can’t always shine,” Boateng told reporters.
And Germany team manager Oliver Bierhoff added: “I did not get the whistles. We won the match after all and the crowd saw a good match.”
However, captain Philipp Lahm said he could sympathise with the supporters.
“We have to accept that, these people pay good money to watch us play,” he said.
While not commenting on the crowd’s reaction in Stuttgart, Loew did concede that he and his squad have plenty of work to do ahead of the World Cup in Brazil.
“You could see just how strong Chile can play,” he said. “We had difficulties getting a grip of the match. We lost many, many balls and that’s when you run into problems. We were not able to dominate the game. We must improve in the next months.”
Lahm featured in the holding-midfield role on Wednesday -- a position he can see himself play for Germany in the future.
He played next to his Bayern Munich teammates Bastian Schweinsteiger and Toni Kroos, who both struggled to impress defensively, allowing Chile to create a number of opportunities.
“Just looking at how many chances Chile had, you could say that was a lucky win for us,” Lahm said. “We all know, we still have a lot of work to do.”
Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker, who was not to blame for Germany’s defensive mistakes, echoed Lahm’s words.
“We still have some work ahead, especially when confronted with such an unorthodox system,” he said, referring to Chile’s 3-5-2 formation. “Our transition play was just not fast enough. It took us too long to get into the counter-attacks. It was a good lesson and not that bad for the mentality.”
The German media was equally downbeat with the performance of Die Nationalmmanschaft.
The match “confirmed that a lot of the Loew team is still in a sorry state,” Bild commented, underneath the headline: “Jogi rages! Despite win even more sorrow.”