Germany can improve but victory and Schweinsteiger's goal boost Low

A win and a clean sheet, plus the feel-good story of captain Bastian Schweinsteiger rising up from the bench to score the second goal after less than three minutes on the pitch. Best of all, though, Sunday's 2-0 win over Ukraine in Lille allowed Joachim Low's Germany to do what they like doing best: Getting positive results in tournament curtain raisers. It's now five wins out of five during Low's reign and means that any negatives can be dwelled upon from the comfort of top spot in Group C.

"As far as our ability to play football is concerned, we couldn't show as much as we can and have done in the past with the national team. We can improve a lot, we have to improve a lot, hopefully it'll happen against Poland," said goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, not sounding overly alarmed.

The Bayern Munich No. 1 belonged to a trio of players -- Toni Kroos and Jerome Boateng were the others -- who were near their best, with everybody being a little off, one way or the other, and Germany convincing only in spells as a consequence.

Neuer was particularly miffed about the high number of corners and free kicks his makeshift defence conceded, often from simple punts up front: "That must not happen, especially against sides who're good with dead balls," the 30-year-old said.

It was the sort of thing that you can say only if the result allows: The right scoreline is the difference between apportioning blame and constructive criticism. Germany's complaints weren't those of a perfectionist, but only assessments of a performance that had left much to be desired.

"It was a classic opening game and we had a bit of luck, especially in the first half," smiled Juventus midfielder Sami Khedira. "But you need that, that's big part of it."

Honesty, like everything in football, is much easier when you've won.

The main theme of the night for Germany was the general need to do better in coming weeks. Bundestrainer Low has been incredibly reluctant to discuss any of his team's problems and, by extension, his own flaws as a coach, but on this occasion was unusually frank about various shortcomings against Ukraine, going into great details about his side's deficiencies with and without the ball.

"In the first half, we lost too many balls up front," he said calmly while sitting on the German state broadcaster's studio armchair. "Our spatial distribution was not good. We had a hole in front of defence; we were a slightly broken team. In the second half, we kept our positions better, which led to more accuracy and confidence in our passing game. We were also able to press them higher. They didn't have single clear-cut chance."

A lack of organisation in defence was probably to be expected in light of the untested back-four combination that started, and more so than the full-strength attacking department's struggle to turn possession into meaningful scoring chances.

"We have to improve our finishing," said Low. "We tried to pass our way through to goal too often; we needed to be more direct, and quicker. It's also better to shoot than to lose the ball in the final third. If you shoot, you have time to organise yourself and the opponent can't go and counterattack you immediately."

A little wobbly at the back, a little timid up top, a little loose in the middle, then. Opening goal scorer Shkodran Mustafi didn't hold back either, lamenting that Germany had allowed the game to be "very open, like an English game" before half-time, when Ukraine created several good chances.

That was quite an indictment, for this team abhors nothing more than losing control. Germany got it back, however, by "dealing with it," as Mustafi put it. Other teams, or previous Germany sides, might have faltered, but the World Cup winners don't, not anymore. They find ways out of the storm and into calmer waters.

That doesn't preclude the necessity to not stray off the course to begin with, to be sure, because better opponents will cook up storms from which Low's men might not escape on a bad day. There's time to think about such a scenario yet, though, and to fine-tune the various parts of the machine.

The return of Schweinsteiger -- "I only have 300 minutes of game time under my belt; I couldn't have wished for this," the Manchester United midfielder said, overcome with emotion -- opens up new possibilities for Low in the knockout stages, namely a return to the Brazil 2014 midfield of Khedira and Kroos playing ahead of the Germany captain.

Kroos, for all his superb passing, was sometimes tasked with too much against Ukraine. He'll be better with someone behind him offering more protection to the back four, thus releasing him to run Germany's passing game alongside Boateng, who has emerged as the second key attack-move instigator.

Mesut Ozil's genius still demands more consistent, telling impact and, in addition, the scrutiny on Mario Gotze is bound to increase. The Bayern Munich midfielder's game as a "false nine" was unconvincing, as was Thomas Muller's deployment on the right. The duo could swap positions for the Poland match, though Gotze might also be sacrificed altogether in favour of Mario Gomez.

Even if Low decides not to change his lineup but instead to concentrate on making it work better, nobody will mind. The national coach didn't just take three points from the Ukraine game; he also won space and time to try out more things in his quest for perfection.

Germany, like their overjoyed captain, really couldn't have wished for much more.

Raphael Honigstein is ESPN FC's German football expert and a regular guest on ESPN FC TV. He also writes for the Guardian. Twitter: @honigstein.