“In the fall of 2000, 11-year-old soccer wunderkind Thomas Muller left TSV Pahl, the local team near his hometown of Weilheim in Oberbayern, and joined Bayern Munich’s youth academy. That same year, 22-year-old Miroslav Klose was co-leading the Bundesliga club FCK in goals, becoming a star in his own right. Fourteen years later, they’re both on the same Germany squad, with Muller chasing the World Cup goals record that Klose just tied. In Germany, one generation is being eclipsed by the next. On Thursday, the United States will have to tussle with both. The U.S. faces Muller, Klose and the rest of the German juggernaut in a match that FiveThirtyEight’s World Cup prediction model gives the Americans only a 15 percent chance of winning.” fivethirtyeight

Dispatch from Berlin: Germany v. Germany
“Here in Berlin, despite the disagreeable weather, World Cup fever is now fully epidemic. There’s hardly a bar or restaurant that hasn’t got a large flat screen TV set up for the benefit of its smoking, drinking, screaming football clientele. The other night, sitting outside at a Mediterranean place in Kreuzberg, I could hear the TVs of the neighboring restaurants echoing across the square, as though the world’s most intricate surround sound system had been installed here.” 8by8