Normally I couldn’t give a hoot for soccer, or football. Until there is a world or now European Championship. Now I devour the sports’ section of the local papers every day, scrounging for gossip about the players, looking for analysis and predictions about the outcome of future games, opinions about outstanding players and disappointing ones. About new stars and sudden has-beens. I don’t actually watch all the games because if you have been following this blog you will know that we don’t have a TV. Thus actually watching a game means finagling an invite to a friend’s house or going to a public viewing event and paying two euros to follow on a huge screen. Luckily we were invited to a friend’s house last week when Germany scored two beautiful goals in the first 25 minutes in a cliffhanger of a match against Portugal that reasserted the German team’s right to hope for more. I do love a hero. And the Germans came up with a couple of heros that night. The Germans, of course, are never the liebling of other nations. We all moan for the Brazilians at the World Cup - they play such acrobatic and quick soccer – while the Germans typically plod forward, set up their combinations, and get on with it.
Soccer is all around. Flags fly from cars and windows – mostly German, but also Turkish, French, Spanish, Italian, Croatian. In offices and staffrooms, petty betting takes place. In schools, the children wear the jerseys of their favorite teams. Last week I wrote a note to my son’s fourth grade teacher who had been assigning merciless amounts of homework. I gently reminded her that when my other son was in fourth grade, the class didn’t get homework when the home team played. Even the employees in the production facilities at the Daimler plant in Stuttgart get the evening off on Wednesday when Germany meets Turkey in the semi-final.
At my local Italian grocer’s the conversation was ripe with speculation on Saturday. Domenico – who must be crying a river since last night when Italy was kicked out in a penalty shoot-out by underdog Spain – says there will be trouble in Germany, no matter whether Turkey or Germany emerges the winner. Certainly there will be celebrations. The Turkish form the largest ethnic minority in Germany, and the team’s tremendous success at the EM has been accompanied by an outpouring of pride. The papers warn not to underestimate the Turkish team. And unlike Domenico, some reporters believe that the match could actually lead to better understanding between the Turkish population in Germany, and the Germans. Es bleibt spannend!
