Revenge for 2008

Lukas Podolski has planned the World Cup semifinals against Spain as a perfect opportunity for Germany. Fernando Torres brought Spain a win in the final two years ago and Podolski would love nothing more than the opportunity to turn the tables on Roja. Cologne said he leave it up to us in the media to decide who the favourites are among Spain and Germany. Podolski added, whenever they get to final they want to win it and said it still hurts. But now they have a great opportunity to get to another final with a win against Spain and they will do everything to get there.

Germany goes into the match with their confidence high after scoring 4 goals in both their knockout stage victories, over England and Argentina. Podolski shrugged off a suggestion by Argentina coach Diego that his team had done more to try and win their game with the Germans counter-attack. He said if they continue to play as they did against England and Argentina, he thinks they can stand a good chance against Spain.

Real rejects Robben, Wesley

Real Madrid rejects Robben and Wesley to show Spain what they are missing as the Dutch helped entering Netherlands in Sunday's World Cup final. They both have been in form in South Africa and their second-half goals brought Holland's win over Uruguay in Tuesday's semi-final. After captain Giovanni opened the scoring, Robben and Wesley combined to bring down South America. Wesley said the most important thing now is to win and there is nothing bigger than the World Cup.

Wesley and Robben could now return to Munich and Milan after being forced out of Madrid to make way for Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Xabi Alonso. Robben's packed two goals in his first game for the Germans and was their star player to win the Bundesliga. They both now have a chance to help Holland to their first World Cup title. If they can win Sunday's final, they will become the second team to record a perfect World Cup campaign after Brazil, by winning every qualification and finals match.

Not practising for penalties

Germany and Spain claimed they have not been practising penalties ahead of their World Cup semifinals on Wednesday. Germany coach Loew said we can't plan for penalties; every coach would want to win over and wouldn't want the stress of penalties. There is no point of practising because when it comes to it there is so much pressure on the players, and we possibly have to make the kick of your life. He said they have got excellent players who have the ability to stand. Spain midfielder Xabi Alonso said they don't even know who would take the penalties.

He said they have not practised anything in particular and not even talked about who would take them. Spain coach Del Bosque said he believes the players will make the decision when the time comes. He guess they will decide themselves and the usual suspects will be taking the penalties.

Gerrard is confident of victory

Bevington said they complied fully with FIFA's regulations by bringing the coach and a player, their captain, to the conference. Furthermore, as agreed with FIFA, they had five minutes with English newspapers and with FIFA.com. In those five minutes the journalists learnt that manager Fabio Capello knew his team which he did not reveal and that skipper Gerrard was confident of their victory.

Bevington declared after five minutes with acceptable sense and thanked everybody very much. He said he would like to invite the English Sunday newspapers to join them in a separate room. One reporter sarcastically clapped and with that the England delegation swept out of the room.

Although German coach Joachim Loew failed to appear, he did speak to them nearly an hour on Friday and the German FA, gave reporters the chance to enquire goalkeeping coach Andreas Koepke for few minutes on their preparations for the game.