People say “It’s the USA versus Mexico tonight.” In every World Cup, England always end up playing a country that they once fought in a war or had colonized. That comes from identifying with a long history that includes a large empire. I suppose some match-ups are not as fraught. New Zealand versus Italy or Ivory Coast versus Japan come to mind. Some match-ups are exciting for strictly footballing reasons, like Germany versus Argentina. Germany's story of its self is very closely linked to the sport.
Let’s take West Germany’s 1954 World Cup
victory in Berne. Called “Das Wunder von Bern” Germany now re-enters the world
stage. There is a way to participate in the international community again. The
defeat and corruption of the Nazis will only haunt the country so long. This
final was the first time the German National Anthem had been played at an
international event since World War Two.
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| 1954 Germany in White and Hungary in Black. Morlock scores for Germany. Source: Getty Images |
There are hundreds of examples of
soccer matches invested with narrative implications. Polish fans remember a
match on July 3rd 1974 that they call “Der Wasserschlacht” the
“Water Slaughter”.
A whole day of rain created conditions that were widely
said to give Germans an advantage. Germany did win the match, knocking Poland
out of the tournament. I was very struck when I found out that Polish television
replayed this entire match right before showing a recent encounter between
these two teams in the 2008 European Championship. How could anyone invest
themselves in such grief?
France’s World Cup 1998 winning side is celebrated as a triumph for the multicultural vision of France. (The story of Zidane became the stuff of obsession because a multi-colored France won in France.) It would be hard now to win with a racist understanding of any national team. Jean-Marie Le Pen stated that he would
Similarly,
many Americans have recently learned of the existence of Black Germans as the
US national team has recruited among the children and grandchildren of
Americans.
It is hard to argue that this victory meant more than the one in 1954 but stories will be told. Right before the World Cup Final, David Goldblatt places the German team in the “real-world” context that informs the sporting narrative:
Germany, finally emerging as what it has been for
decades, the pre-eminent European power, has a football team to match its
ambitions and its character: brilliantly organised but instantly flexible,
individually accomplished but telepathically networked, technically superior to
the Brazilians in touch, positioning and anticipation. Yet they carry other German
traits too: a collective solidarity that disdains the egotistical, and a
realistic conservatism about an uncertain world, for no one feels victory is
assured. (“The World Cup is Political Theater of the Highest Order” the Guardian 11 July 2014)
Sylla describes the narrative as wholly soccer-based. But look at his final two paragraphs.
Following the country’s failure at the 2000 European Championships, Germany heavily overhauled its soccer infrastructure. The DFB integrated more immigrants into its academies — facilitated by the reform of the German nationality law in 1999 — to improve the selection pool, which opened the path to the likes of Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose (Polish descent), Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira (Turkish descent) and even Mario Gomez (Spanish descent), among others.
Maybe this absence of any added significance in victory has helped Germany focus better on their objective: winning. At least, compared to Brazil, the difference was clear as day. Unlike the hosts who were all emotion, Germany had been all business.What is submitted as "all business" and "apolitical" is highly political. Germany is winning because it has become cosmopolitan.
Sylla is not one hundred per cent accurate, though international immigration is confusing. Germany would have issued passports (if not full citizenship) to all of these players. Klose and Poldoski were Aussiedler and had a right to citizenship based on German ancestry. Mesut Özil is a third-generation German and Khedira (of Tunisian descent) and Gomez have German parents. The path was not opened by new immigration laws. This team is marked by the Europeanization of Germany. Look at the picture with Merkel and our idea of what it means to be German is shown to have shifted. (This move is one of the reasons Germany has weathered a few economic storms it should be said.)
This raises the question of how important a World Cup should be. I have been arguing that creative fans should write the stories that work and that ought to be told. Goldblatt is an excellent example of this, though some of the debtor countries in Europe may not be as impressed with Germany's economic achievement. Sylla's tone reminds us that we should have an ironic stance towards all narratives that hold sport up next to the world. Once a result is used to explain the outer-soccer context, we should look back into the soccer context. After all, if Mario Götze had just hiccuped, we would have told a story of Argentina recovering from a currency crisis. If that didn't work, then we would have told a story of a very resolute team. Or we would have deified Messi.
I am ready to welcome these big stories if irony is brought to bear. However, the fact that FIFA denies glory to the women's game gives the ironist the upper hand.
[1] Ogo Sylla, “For
Germany, For Once, It Means Nothing: previous triumphs were fraught with political
overtones but the 2014 champions will be remembered solely for their soccer” Howler at http://www.howlermagazine.com/germany-means-nothing/
[1] See Deutsche
Welle, “Mourning the Miracle of Berne” http://www.dw.de/mourning-the-miracle-of-bern/a-948399-1.
Like many people I also would refer to David Goldblatt’s The Ball is Round [ref and ppg.]. This title quotes Sepp Herberger,
the manager of this German team.
