A beaten team which now appears to have the necessary self-belief to go all the way.

I have a feeling that ability won't be the deciding factor next Sunday evening. We can talk about the qualities of Jens Lehmann, Philipp Lahm, Torsten Frings and Miroslav Klose, but in truth, Germany are an ordinary side with a single worldclass player.

I don't think I'm the only one who underestimated their sheer determination to get this job done. From a position where the manager was being slaughtered in the media, and his players written off, Germany have turned a difficult situation around. As with the Argentina game, I don't see them as necessarily superior to Italy, but with the sort of support they have now generated and with their own brand of willpower, they should win Tuesday's semifinal.

I still want to believe that skill will triumph over grit and organisation at a World Cup finals, and I still want to believe that one or two individual players can rise above a level which has not been overly impressive, but it seems now that Germany could do it their way. They have arguably more momentum than the other teams left in the competition, and whereas at one stage the pressures of being the host nation looked as if they might overwhelm Jurgen Klinsmann and his players, the Germans are now on a roll. A few weeks ago, it was felt that Klinsmann had the worst German squad ever going into a World Cup finals, and now he is two games away from glory.

You have to give him credit for that.

Italy have a superb defence, and a hard-working midfield, but they lack a flair player to make them a World Cup winning side. Francesco Totti has done well since his injury, but he's not a Roberto Baggio, he's not someone who's going to change a game. So Germany should make it through to the final.

I was extremely disappointed in how Argentina played on Friday after Roberto Ayala's goal because, until then, they had been the team of the tournament.

They were comfortable, assured, they had belief in themselves and then, perversely, scoring did them no favours.

From that moment on, they thought they could sit in front of their 18-yard box and hold on. They never really strung a move together.

I didn't actually think that Jose Pekerman was wrong to substitute Juan Riquelme, who hadn't lived up to his billing but I just couldn't understand why one creative player such as Lionel Messi, who would've ran with the ball and put some pressure on, wasn't introduced.

Julio Cruz came in and couldn't get hold of the ball, and it could've been that Pekerman wanted him to defend at corners and free kicks because it never looked as if he was going to do anything going forward. If Pekerman set out to defend his lead, it was still the wrong substitution. As for Esteban Cambiasso, he was playing 30 yards deeper than where Riquelme had been. So from about the hour mark, Argentina never really got out of their half.

It's not possible in football to shut a game down. Of course, a team can be less adventurous, but you still need an outlet, someone who can give you a breather and remind the opposition at the same time that a threat still exists.

Somewhere along the line on Friday, Pekerman forgot that, or he allowed his better judgement to be clouded. He paid for it with his job, stepping down on Friday night.

Player for player, Argentina are superior to Germany.

They have more ability, more options in the side, but they'll still be wondering how they let that match slip away. They had lost all momentum, and their body language looked defeatist, by the time they got to penalties. You could see they were thinking that they should never really have been in that position and, as we know, the team that approaches a shoot-out that way invariably loses.

And then they had to face Lehmann (left) who positively relishes a situation like that. The fact that he dived the right way for all five penalties wasn't a question of him having done his homework on the takers, but it wasn't coincidence either. It's a combination of intuition and experience, and he won the psychological battle hands down.

Like their goalkeeper, Germany don't appear to have an ounce of doubt in their minds. And that could make the difference in the end.