There is a particular kind of opponent that is harder to face the second time, because the first time you beat them, you also taught them exactly how you did it.
Germany were that opponent.
Six weeks before the semi-final, in Lisbon, Lorenzo's Barcelona had beaten Guardiola's Bayern Munich to win the Champions League. Many of the men who had lost that final wore German white now. Neuer, who had come charging off his line all night in Lisbon and been beaten anyway. Boateng, who had chased Lorenzo's movement for ninety minutes. Kroos, who had tried to control the midfield and found Xavi and Iniesta there to meet him. Müller, who had haunted the spaces all game. And now they were back, in a different shirt, with a World Cup semi-final on the line, and a score to settle.
"This is not Bayern," Del Bosque warned his squad in the tactical meeting, two days out. "Do not make that mistake. It is many of the same players, yes. But it is a different team, with a different manager, a different shape, and a different mood. Bayern in Lisbon were a great team trying to win a trophy. This Germany is a machine that has just put seven goals past Brazil in a semi-final and believes, completely, that it cannot be stopped."
He put the German shape on the wall. Löw's knockout 4-2-3-1. Neuer in goal, the sweeper-keeper who played as an eleventh outfield man. Lahm, the captain, moved back to right-back where he was world-class. Boateng and Hummels, the best centre-back pairing in the tournament. Höwedes at left-back. Schweinsteiger and Khedira screening. And ahead of them, the part that had broken Brazil: Müller, Kroos, and Özil behind Klose, four attacking players who moved and interchanged and passed with a precision that looked rehearsed because it was.
"Klose," Del Bosque said, tapping the screen. "The all-time World Cup top scorer. Thirty-six years old and still the cleverest movement in the box of anyone left in this tournament. Ramos, Piqué, you do not switch off for one second against him. He scores his goals in the half-seconds when defenders stop concentrating."
The tactical problem, Del Bosque explained, was that Germany were good at everything.
"Italy gave us the ball and defended. Germany will not do that. Germany want the ball too, and they are good enough to take it from us, which almost no one is. This will not be a siege like Italy. This will be a fight for control of the game, midfield against midfield, and whoever wins that midfield wins the match."
He looked at Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets. The three men who had defined an era of Spanish football, all of them a year older than they had been the last time this mattered.
"Kroos and Schweinsteiger and Khedira are younger than you," Del Bosque said bluntly. "They will run more than you. So we do not try to run with them. We do what we have always done. We keep the ball and we make them chase it, and we make the younger legs do the running, and by the seventieth minute we see whose legs have gone. In Lisbon, their legs went first. I am betting they will again."
For the shape, Del Bosque chose the double pivot. Against an attack-heavy Germany with Müller, Kroos, and Özil all floating between the lines, he wanted the extra man in midfield. Busquets and Xabi Alonso would both sit. Xavi and Iniesta would push up as the eights. And with the extra defensive body in midfield meaning no natural link to the front, Lorenzo would drop to connect, with Costa staying high as the point of the attack.
"Lorenzo," Del Bosque said, "this is the match where you are not just a finisher. With two holding midfielders, you are the link between our midfield and Costa. Drop in, connect, make us whole. And then, when the moment comes, be where you always are."
"And if Costa gets isolated up there?" Pautasso, the assistant, asked.
"Then Torres comes on to hold at the top and Lorenzo keeps linking," Del Bosque said. "Or Villa, as a second striker, and we push Lorenzo to the point. We have options. We will use whichever the match asks for."
The emotional weight of the match was its own factor, and Del Bosque addressed it directly at the end.
"You know what Germany did to Brazil," he said quietly. "The whole world knows. And some of you are carrying things into this match. Lorenzo, I know you have spoken to Neymar." He did not elaborate, and Lorenzo did not react, but the manager's eyes found him for a moment. "Carry it if you must. But carry it the right way. Grief makes you careless. Purpose makes you sharp. Walk out there with purpose, not with grief, and let the purpose make you better, not wilder. Germany will punish wild. They punished Brazil for playing with their hearts and not their heads. Do not give them the same gift."
The meeting broke up. Casillas stayed behind for a moment, the old goalkeeper looking at the German shape on the wall, at Müller and Klose and Kroos, the machine that had scored seven.
Del Bosque came to stand beside him. "You're thinking about keeping a clean sheet against that."
"I'm thinking I kept their shots out in Lisbon," Casillas said. "I can do it again." He turned. "They scored seven against a team that fell apart. We will not fall apart. Give me a back line that concentrates, and I will give you a semi-final."
That night, alone, Lorenzo felt the system stir.
[The machine. Tomorrow.]
I've beaten most of them before. In Lisbon.
[You have. And that is both your advantage and your danger. You know you can beat them, which gives you belief. They know you beat them, which gives them fury. Belief against fury. That is the match.] A pause. [Del Bosque is right about the grief. You are carrying Neymar and Messi and all of them into this, and that weight can make you play out of yourself, or it can make you force things and lose. The difference is whether you carry it as fuel or as a burden.]
Fuel, Lorenzo thought. They told me to win it for them. I can't do that by playing badly.
[Then play the way you played against Italy. Patient. Sharp. Content to link and create until your moment comes.] The system's tone hardened. [But know this. Germany will give you more chances than Italy did, because Germany come forward. And they will give you more danger too. This will not be won one-nil in the eighty-eighth minute. This will be a real match, with real goals, both ends. Be ready for a war, not a siege.]
Lorenzo lay in the dark and thought about Lisbon, about Neuer charging off his line, about Boateng's face when Lorenzo had beaten him. He thought about the shirt being carried onto the pitch at the Mineirão, and David Luiz crying in front of the supporters, and Neymar's words.
Win it.
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