Germany's collection of youngsters and fringe players have battled tirelessly to become a superb team at the Confederations Cup and head coach Joachim Low believes their progress to the final surpasses reasonable expectations.
Leon Goretzka netted a brilliant early brace to stun Mexico during Thursday's semi-final and second-half goals from Timo Werner and Amin Younes sealed a comprehensive 4-1 win.
Again, the world champions made light of the fact star names such as Thomas Muller, Mesut Ozil and Toni Kroos are resting up at home, with the likes of Goretzka, Werner and Lars Stindl adapting seamlessly to international football in their absence.
Chile lie in wait in Sunday's final, with St Petersburg hosting a swift rematch of an entertaining 1-1 group-stage draw.
"This is not something you could possibly expect from the start, right? This was a grand achievement, I think," said a clearly enthused Low during a post-match news conference at Fisht Stadium.
"It wasn't effortless. It has been an incredible amount of work, which requires our players to be very disciplined.
"This is not something we could pre-empt because some of our players had had no experience at all with the national team, some others had a number of caps but no tournament experience. You couldn't calculate it.
"They are taking to the pitch together, fighting for one another. Collectively they have won. I'm quite confident to say we have become a genuine team.
"They are very ambitious. They are yearning to be part of the national team. They are ambitious to win against Chile as well. Our players are reasonable and quite confident they can pull it off."
We can't wait for Sunday's final in St. Petersburg But for now, good night everyone! June 29, 2017
Sought-after Schalke midfielder Goretzka's strikes came inside the eighth minute and Low explained Germany's dynamic attacking start to the contest was prompted by the expectation that Mexico would try to catch them cold.
"Normally the Mexicans are starting a match by imposing their way of playing on us," he said.
"We wanted to turn that around. Right from the beginning we wanted to show our dominance.
"We were the ones who wanted to win the match. So we were moving forward, pressing ahead. And the team, as you have seen in the first 15 or 20 minutes, has been so powerful in achieving precisely that."
