Berlin last night was a split city again, divided this time not by concrete, but by football.
On the one side were the French fans, who rightly felt they had been let down by their hero and captain, Zinedine Zidane. On the other were the Italian fans, still in shock at having finally overcome history to win the Cup on penalty kicks. The sides sat uneasily across from each other as the subway pulled out of Zoo station just after the game. No one seemed sure what to make of the match, and those who spoke talked in low, hushed tones about “Zizou.”
Trouble flared when an Italian fan bumped into a young woman, who was dressed up like a classic French mime. The mime’s hot drink splashed onto the back of the young woman’s leg, and despite it being her fault, she turned around and began yelling at the mime, whereupon the Frenchwoman tossed the full cup of tea into her face. A large crowd gathered and police struggled to break up the chaos.
As the night wore on, however, the mood shifted. When we were finally able to leave the Olympiastadion, we were joined by a rambunctious group of Italian fans who cheerfully taunted their French counterparts with shouts of: “Chi sono i campioni del mondo? Italia!” They then followed that up with a cheer for Zidane, who was clearly already being remembered as the villain of the night. The French fans along the train took this in good stride, however, joining in cheers with the fans for both Italy and France
As we finally left Berlin’s main train station at 2 am, stepping around the fans sleeping on the floor waiting for the next train to anywhere that wasn’t Berlin, we watched a sad young French fan make her way down the platform. Dressed in Gaulish horns and a flowing white skirt — sort of Asterix meets Marianne— her red and white face paint had run down, staining her blue French jersey. She was still crying as she drank her coffee.
One million German fans gathered this afternoon in steamy central Berlin to cheer on their team one last time. Or did they? Was this just a large group of people out for a nice day in the sun?
One of the paradoxes of this World Cup has been the excitement of German fans and people, yet an atmosphere that seems almost scrubbed of fandom. Sure, there have been some passionate folks that have traveled from around the world to see the Cup. But the vibe given off my this Cup — one we admit we can’t quite put our finger on yet — is different than those of years’ past.
In 1998, France went from willfully ignoring the tournament to embracing it in a genuine, and overnight rush that culminated in true joy on the streets of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. In Korea in 2002, the people — who couldn’t even be called “fans” per se since they had virtually no experience with the sport — defied the marketers and reacted with innocent, childlike abandon to the performance of their team to the point that it swept the entire nation into the streets. To be there was to witness exponential mathematics at work: first 100,000 cheered, then 1 million, then the streets were filled with tens of millions.
This year, as we’ve written, feels more like a big college party. It’s kind of like Glastonbury without the mud, and a lot of this has to do with the people actually attending the games.
Entering the Olympiastadion this afternoon (a positively creepy experience) we saw some Italian fans, some French fans… and then a whole lot of people wearing red “prestige” badges and expensive clothing. This final is the culmination of a trend at this Cup which has seen more and more seats taken up by people up for a day out rather than actual soccer fans.
Where are these people coming from? Well, they’re the same people that the World Cup marketers are shilling to. They buy expensive Toyotas and Hyundais, can plop down $6,000 for one of those swanky Philips plasma TVs, and generally seem less interested in the sport than the merch. There’s nothing wrong with these folks, but they don’t seem to really care about the game itself… just about whether their seat is prestigious enough.
This is a pattern making its way through soccer — the reduction of fan groups to entertainment for the upper-middle class by penning them into corners is nothing new, after all — and where once it was viewed as a way to “clean up the stands” and make them “safe for families,” it’s clear that what it has actually done is rob the game of something else.
“Welcome to the World Cup in Germany,” said the conductor en route to Berlin yesterday. “You know, the one we lost.” It’s been one of those tournaments: dryly absurd at its height and, at its nadir, having all the charm of a American football tailgate.
Last night, at the Brandenburg gate we watched the fans stream past us after the hosts toppled Portugal (a team that we are still trying to figure out just how it got to the third place game in the first place — this is a side that netted just six goals heading into Saturday evening) and it struck us as oddly meaningless. It didn’t feel like a World Cup; it felt more like a college weekend out. As Wrigley Field has been transformed from a place where the Cubs play into a place where you go and hang out, so was Germany, in many places we visited, for the Cup. The commercialization and santization of the Cup as a whole reached a new height we hadn’t thought possible after Japan; we were wrong. Lost, in all of this, was the feeling of the fan.
The most meaningful moments for us in this Cup, so far, have been the ones informed by history. While it’s dangerous to make generalizations, there’s no question that the organizers of World Cup 06 had hoped to showcase a “new Germany,” at the centre of a new Europe. Germany is clearly a very different place than it was even ten years ago, but the question of whether it is today any different then it was back in December when the Cup unofficially kicked off in Leipzig is an open question.
We’ve been charmed by some of our hosts, yet repelled by many of the undercurrents we still feel. (Being a mixed-race couple, we may both be more attuned and vulnerable to such things; we hasten to note that it was no different in Sicily a few years back… or, for that matter, home in Chicago.) We have been struck by the openness and generosity of some and puzzled by the general dourness of others. Most of the happiest folks we’ve met this trip aren’t from Germany, oddly enough — they moved here from the Eastern bloc states or other European countries.
And, last night, as we walked along the river Spree among the thousands of fans — a shocking number of whom seemed like they were there on a corporate junket — we got the sense that there was a lot of passion but no substance. We felt that this was a celebration, sure… but for what?
We had an entirely different sense when we came to the Reichstag and then walked on to the Holocaust Memorial. At night, after passing the German constitution in glass at Parliament, the people sitting quietly on the steps of the Reichstag seemed to have a great deal more resonance to us. True, Adidas had set up its own fan fest just a few hundred yards away, but the people weren’t looking at that or at the big screens.
They were looking at each other as they passed, waving and smiling. And then they were looking up, on a nearly full moon.
We’ve seen some fun stuff this past weekend that we didn’t get a chance to tell you about, so in no particular order:
This weekend, we happened to be walking down the street to the market and lo and behold, around a corner come this parade full of tiny soccer players. The kids were all sitting in cars and waving to those of us folks who, well, kinda just happened to be there on the side of the road; except for the American kids who were loudly complaining that it was too hot. And boy, were they right. It is hot.
As it turned out the wee ones were one of two sets of soccer tournaments for kids going on this weekend in conjunction with the World Cup. The parade we saw was for something called the “Jetix Kids Cup,” which ends today at the Olympic Stadium. Interestingly, this may be the only soccer tournament on the planet where the USA will beat Brazil 3-1 (as the kids did today — well done, lads). The other — and undoubtedly a bit more noble — kids’ tournament going on right now is the Street Football World Festival, located up in Berlin. There, the USA’s Soccer in the Streets program is competing in a 24-team street tournament that showcases squads made up of underprivileged and at-risk kids. They do good work and any gang of kids that can brave 97º heat on blacktop gets our nod. So far SITS is 1-2-0 in the tourney, which continues through July 9. Closer to the World Cup Final in Berlin, we’ll write a bit more about them.
Around that same time, we stumbled across a open-air party going on that pleasantly surprised us. For one thing, coming from Chicago, we love our street parties. Sure, they have the same crappy bands each time (we understand Mr. Blotto owns the soundsystem…) and paying $5 for a warm Leinie en plastique isn’t exactly haute, but there’s something very fun about being able to get out and mingle with people that don’t actually live on your street but have popped up because there was a party.
So, this “Muencher Strassenfeste” (this particular one was at the Gartnerplatz) promised displays of Brazilian music, capoeira and caprinhas. It delivered; this was one of the only public gatherings we got to see this year that had absolutely nothing to do with soccer, and we were grateful for the respite. (Note to self: Thank France again.) It also, coincidentally, showed that Munich had a large and vibrant #### community — there was a lot of fabulousness about and a fair number of HIV/AIDS education booths to boot. It was a bit odd seeing rent boys drinking those enormo liter mugs of beer, but so be it; this was a festive atmosphere out in the sunshine. After we spent an hour or so watching the DJs battling (techno vs. breakbeat vs. #### techno vs. kinda gloomy German ambient), we walked down the street, clutching our big mugs and stopped to get a bite to eat. “Street fest?” asked the waiter? “It is good, but it is how you say, ‘####?’”
This is a busy day for us here in Germany, so expect a LOT of material to fllow into the blogs and onto the front page over the next six hours or so. And please do join Olli Hinz at his blog for live and admittedly biased coverage during the game.
(Confidential to CT: Sorry for deleting your comment; I wanted to bump this thread up!)
Interesting stats compiled by one of our assistants: Check this out. The data we have is "99.9%" confirmed; we're still going over the worksheets, but we think we are close enough here to release it to you:
NUMBER OF PLAYERS ON A NATIONAL TEAM WHO PLAY CLUB SOCCER IN THE HOME NATION
1986, 411 of 528, 77.8%
1990, 382 of 528, 72.3%
1994, 366 of 528, 69.3%
1998, 389 of 704, 55.3%
2002, 376 of 736, 51.1 %
2006, 370 of 736, 50.3%
It seem to be valid to take the above figures and say that any sort of "national style" has been rapidly lost over the 6 most recent World Cups. At this point, barely half of the WC eligibles even play in their citizenship country. There are some notable exceptions to the above figures: Germany, Spain, England, Italy among the world powerhouses are almost 100% homegrown Cup after Cup.
But, is there a true "Argentine" or "Brazil" style? The data doesn't really support that unless, of course, one considers that the Brazilian-born players may have learned their style as kids on the beach or in the favelas. That gets into a more sociological question than one that can be handled by data along. Or you get into detailed analysis of how long a Brazilian/Argentine/Ghanaian played in home country before moving abroad, etc. But, suffice it to say that when the Dutch met the Portuguese this year, less than 50% of the players actually played soccer in their home nation. So, those types of matches are a blender, a homogenized sport, not a national style.
RAW NUMBER OF WORLD CUP PLAYERS PLAYING FOR EUROPEAN CLUBS
(and percentage of total players at the Cup)
These numbers don't swing as dramatically as the other data, but there is an interesting 6.5% upward tick since 1998. Especially noteworthy is Brazil's 20 Europeans in '06 opposed to 10 in '02. Moreover the sheer raw number of players plying the trade in Europe has risen dramatically; yes, roster sizes have gone up 1 per team (22 to 23 between 1998 and 2002), but the total number of players boomed 66 or 34 more than just the roster increase would have predicted.
Sweden is doing a fine impression of Droopy at the moment; the missed pk and being down a man have conspired to sap them of what vigour they had left entering the half.
We're told that Munich is utterly silent right now, as well.
A just result. We thought Larsson made a meal of it in the first place. Shocking to see Larsson miss, however — a goood illustration of how out-of-form this once-great player really is.
Well, it's been pretty clear which is the better side today, eh? Germany is organised, focused and has a solid game plan which they are executing to perfection. If it weren't for Isaksson, Sweden couldn be 6-0 down.
On the strength of this half-hour alone, we think it's safe to say that Klinsmann has done a marvelous job re-making this side. We also think that American fans who are hoping Klinsmann will come over are bound to be disappointed — why would he come to a country where he has 1) no true players of international calibre; 2) a broken youth system that must be fixed, desperately and 3) no real financial rewards?
The USA's next TD has to actuallly BE a techncial director: A fair knock on Bruce is that he clearly pays no attention to the kids and the women. Now, fair enough on the women; that really should be its own program. But you cannot overlook the kids, and there's very, very slim pickings there now for all the millions USSF has invested in it.
MLS also clearly cannot develop the talent. Let's be blunt and just admit that while the internationals might not have lit up the stage, the homegrown guys really struggled. Ching and Wolff didn't even get on the field; Olsen was horrid and Johnson was this year's Clint Mathis, except he didn't score. MLS still is not at the level it needs to be at because the talent pool is neither good enough or deep enough.
And it's going to get worse. Even conservative estimates by people who actually work in this field note that it'll take 10-15 years to get a true MLS academy system in place. And that's IF they can get some of the historic opposition to professionalising the game out of the way.
Sunil Gulati and whomever he choses as coach face a real challenge there. They HAVE to break away from the college system or reform it along the lines that hockey took. They HAVE to spend the money and build a farm system. They HAVE to stop burning kids out in useless "travel" and so-called "premier" youth club play.
If the USA really wants to succeed at the sport, it's going to have to leave some very childish things behind, starting with its attitude.
Frings wins a corner with a fine outside shot to pressure Isaksson that nearly results in another goal for Germany with another fine outside shot, this time from Schneider.
We're getting a good look at the tactics of "attacking soccer" right now; the Germans are putting on a real clinic here that really shows up what a tactical failure the USA was.
Klinsmann has recognised that at this level, you have to keep the ball on the floor -- long balls flighted in for headers don't work, and you need to establish midfield control through direct, diagonal passing to pick apart a defense. Note how Germany is largely directing their attacks right up the middle in an attempt to split the centre-backs — when they move the ball out to the flanks, it's quickly switched back in to allow Klose, Podolski or Ballack the shot.
In fact, so far, it seems to us that every ball that Germany has conceded has come from either a broken lateral pass or from an attempt to punt it down the field.
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