Former German international Oliver Bierhoff believes the national squad have improved tremendously since their last tournament together.

Germany manager Joachim Low is widely expected to retain the bulk of World Cup 2010 squad for the upcoming European Championships. The team had achieved a respectable third place in South Africa, having been knocked out by eventual champions Spain during their semi-final meeting.

Having been drawn in the group of death with Portugal, Holland and Denmark, the squad are aware it will be no easy feat making it to the knockout stages. However, Bierhoff has confidence the team have improved sufficiently over the last two years for them to do well at Euro 2012, especially since many of the players now have championship-winning experience to fall back on.

"Today we have a squad that is better and has more depth, we are much further along than in 2010, because we have players like [Mesut] Ozil, [Sami] Khedira, and [Holger] Badstuber who have really established themselves with their current clubs and learned a lot." he said to Kicker.

"There are so many good German players that are coming to the national team having won major titles."

The former striker believes this edition of the European Championship is unlikely to throw up many surprises, though he picked out host country Poland as a possible dark horse.

"We all expect Spain and Netherlands to challenge and I think that this will be a tournament for the biggest football nations, but I also think that Poland will play a role."