Wolff made 21 saves, some of them incredible, against the surprise team of the tournament and kept his team in the game time and again. But after a 70-minute handball thriller, they were eliminated from the World Cup. Wolff's frustration was particularly evident immediately after the end of the game as he raged and shouted out his anger.
"We had every chance of reaching the semifinal," Wolff analysed a few moments later in a surprisingly sober manner. While the Kiel goalkeeper had kept the Germans in the game with acrobatic actions, the German attack failed to get going when it mattered in crunch time. Portugal were able to force the match into extra time, and were finally able to celebrate their first ever semifinal appearance thanks to a goal four seconds before the final buzzer.
"We weren't smart and clever enough. That's very, very bitter," said playmaker Luca Witzke. Also Christoph Steinert was frustrated:"It's a huge disappointment. We had different ideas. We were actually very confident of winning the game today."
Gislason: "Not a setback"
Instead of playing for their first World Cup medal in 18 years and reaching the semi-finals at a major tournament for the third time in a row, Wolff and Co. will now be travelling home on Thursday. Six months after winning the Olympic silver medal, national coach Alfred Gislason did not want to draw an exclusively negative conclusion about the tournament.
To the match centre: Portugal vs. Germany
"This is not a setback. We'll learn from it," said the Icelandic coach, even if he was "naturally extremely sad". The 65-year-old pointed out that strong nations like Sweden, who came third in the European Championships, Spain and co-hosts, Norway also had crashed out of the tournament, but added:"We would have loved to have made it to the semifinal."
Tournament goal missed
The German team had been dreaming of precious metal before the tournament and had set themselves the goal of reaching the semifinals - but they rarely lived up to their usual high level over the course of the tournament. Germany were already shaky in the preliminary round when they suffered a 30-40 defeat against Olympic and world champions Denmark in the main round, before being knocked out by Portugal.
Gislason did not want to speak of a step backwards after his seventh final tournament as German national team coach, even though his team at least were able to repeat their fifth place in the World Cup from two years ago. Witzke's analysis was probably the most appropriate:"I wouldn't say it was a step backwards. But we didn't take a step forwards either."