It’s going to be tight, warns goal hero Muller

Thomas Muller has warned Germany fans not to expect tomorrow’s World Cup final against Argentina to be as easy as their semi-final cruise over Brazil.

The 24-year-old was joint-top scorer and named Best Young Player at the 2010 World Cup and he has made another major contribution this time around, scoring five goals to help Germany through to final.

One of those goals came in the astonishing 7-1 thrashing of the host nation in the last four, but he insists nobody in the Germany camp is getting carried away by that result.

“I don’t know what kind of a game it will be but I don’t expect it to be 5-0 at half-time,” the Bayern Munich forward said yesterday.

“That would be nice, but it’s probably going to be tight, like it was against Algeria or France.”

Germany led Brazil 5-0 at the break on Tuesday with many members of Joachim Low’s team admitting they had to pinch themselves to see if it was really true.

Defender Mats Hummels was quoted as saying the players had agreed during the interval not to go out and embarrass Brazil in the second-half, and Muller confirmed such a decision was made.

“It was about not trying to humiliate our opponents or showboating,” he said.

“We wanted to carry on playing normal football and not get arrogant, but that’s quite normal — it was the players’ initiative.”

As a result, Muller says Germany were able to “concentrate on preserving energy and avoiding injuries” in the second 45 minutes against Brazil, a game that was also played 24 hours before Argentina’s 120-minute encounter with Holland, which was decided by penalties.

Germany could therefore be fresher tomorrow, but the real difference in the eyes of captain Philipp Lahm is likely to be their experience.

“Experience is important,” said the 30-year-old, who has lifted eight trophies for Bayern Munich in the past two years.

“At club level, many of us have already been involved in big games. Whether they were positive or negative is not important, but we all have experience in a Champions League final, DFB-Pokal final, or whatever.

“We’re always playing at the very top level and when you go through our squad, you’ll see we’ve all got that experience and it’s certainly an advantage for us.”

Lahm is therefore also very confident he will be lifting a trophy into the air for the ninth time since August 2012 on Sunday, and he already has plans for afterwards.

“I think I’ll just have an early night,” he said. “By that, I mean in the early hours.”

Should Germany triumph in Rio, they will return to Germany for a reception in Berlin on Tuesday, along the so-called fan mile linking the Brandenburg Gate and the Siegessaule.

Meanwhile Per Mertesacker thinks Germany will lose the final if they do not perform to the exact same standard as they did against Brazil.

“We must stay focused and play the same way that we did against Brazil, otherwise we have no chance,” the Germany defender said.

“Our performance against Brazil was nearly 100%. If you look at the stats, the passing, the goals we scored, everything was so fluent. But if we drop 5% then we will have no chance.

“(Winning 7-1) is dangerous for us,” the Arsenal centre-back said.

“We can’t lose our focus now because we scored seven goals.

“We must keep calm and be aware of the situation. Our main target is to win the final. We want to finish on a high.

“We want more history. We don’t want to just settle for this result before the final.”