Preview: Uruguay – Germany

(GSM) – Uruguay and Germany battle for third place at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth. Both sides will have to forget their semi-final heartbreak in order to capture bronze at the mondial stage.

The coaches of both teams insist they take this game seriously as they look to end the tournament on a high. “I have got to try to wake up the team. We will approach the match seriously,” said Germany coach Joachim Loew after the semi-final against Spain (1-0 loss).

Uruguay proved to be the surprise pack of this World Cup, claiming a place in the semi-finals was already a surprise; grabbing third place would be a real miracle for the small country (3 million people).

Uruguay manager Oscar Tabarez knows his team will do everything they can to defeat Germany. “This is a very difficult game,” he said.

“Yes, fourth position is not the same as others, but we will go in with the same commitment and enthusiasm like we did in the encounter against Holland (3-2 loss)

“We have no assurance that we will win, but we will prepare ourselves to fight to the death.”

The World Cup statistics prove that this could turn out to be a very exciting match. You have to go back to 1974, when Poland edged Brazil 1-0, for fewer than three in the third-place play-off, while the last two have produced five and four respectively.