God help us, it’s Fußball Fieber

Just like the Florida Gator Football games of my college past, I tried to resist participating in the crazed menagerie of screaming stadium fans and modern-day gladitorial combat. I failed miserable for 5 seasons, watching both the rise and fall of an overly funded American sport. After graduating, I was exhausted from the statistics, player names, laryngitis, and hearing loss. I vowed I wouldn’t be so serious about football or any other so overly publicize sport again. I stayed informed only enough to seem mildly interested in those 5-min sport gabs before a meeting. Sorry, I had to prioritize.

fußball madnessAnd now here I am in Germany, in the middle of a freaky sport phenomenon of the likes I never knew could ever exist. English speakers know it as the World Cup, WC, and German speakers call it the Weltmeisterschaft, or WM. I prefer the WM. Just read it allowed: World Master Championship. It sounds more important than World Cup.

It’s true; every country in the world will have their eyes on the final game. Someone in a little village will hook their car battery to a tiny b/w tv and crowds will form. People will cry, faint, make babies. If you don’t believe me, watch this program by ARTE this thursday, 8 June. It’s a documentary showing the reaction of 41 different nations over the 1994 final game between Brazil and Italy. You can’t capture human emotion better than this film.

I feel bad that I never followed the WM in my life. It’s just not that popular in the U.S. and that’s a shame. The whole world is in awe of the U.S. and yet, the U.S. still carries on in isolation. It seems weird to me that we shake our moral doctrines beyond our borders but can’t rally enough enthusiasm to embrace one anothers’ differences and play a little ball. Instead we established our own sport. I’m not saying Americans don’t participate or watch the event, but come on…this is BIG.

So my vow is broken. My arm has been twisted after driving past the Alliance Area, through the road construction, watching the Marienplatz subway station get a major makeover, and back-to-back fußball history and strategie programs. A local grocery store is handing out player stats on plastic coins. The Süddeutsche Zeitung gave away a Fußball glossary in six different languages in last weekend’s newspapers. I can’t look away; especially when all this will be going on for a month in my backyard.

So if you’d like, I’ll share with you some of the German Fußball mania I’ve been exposed to during my almost 11 months in Germany. It’s mostly a little bit of German sport history and the people’s faces you’d most likely see every day in your life here.

Since 1930, Germany has won 3 out of the 17 last WM’s and made it to the quarter finals 10 times. Germany’s success can be attributed to the fact that 7% of Germany’s population participates in Fußball clubs around the country. Fußball has been considered a working class sport; the laborers would beat the daily grind, kick a ball of tied cloth, and maybe become national heroes like in 1954. Today’s German team is alot different than those days. The pay is different and the pressure is unmeasurable. But the love is just the same. And what can one say…German’s love Fußball and Bier. So here are the faces. If you live here already, you know them by now:

Michael Ballack Yeah. wooh. um. Sorry ladies, Ballack married to his high-school sweetheart with kids. But you don’t have to miss out because there are gazillions of advertisements with his buddy-boy face everywhere. This midfielder plays for Bayern München but will break the hearts of Bavarians by playing for Chelsea in the English Premier League from the start of the 2006-07 season. He’s earned the German player of the year award on three occasions (2002, 2003, 2005), Some experts consider him the most complete footballer in the world today.

Franz BeckenbauerThis is Franz Beckenbauer. He is the only man to have won the World Cup both as a player and as a manager. Mister Ego himself with nicknames like “Emperor Franz” and “The Kaiser”, he’s also known for his style and invented the role of the attacking sweeper. He’s maintained his record above Ballack by winning the German player of the year award four times. He’s a living legend and he can do no wrong in Germany even if the tabloids write a scoop about him every other day.

Jürgen KlinsmannNicknamed the “Golden Bomber” and a trained baker, Jürgen Klingsmann is the manager/trainer for the 2006 National Team and two time winner of the German player of the year award. He gets a lot of flack by the german public because he commutes to the U.S. and let’s face it, his team has played a bit inconsistenly for the german nerve, does he look a little stressed to you? Bastian Schweinsteiger

Well never fear! The Schweinsteiger is here! This 21-year old youngn’ has got a peculiar name, meaning ‘pig mounter’. [All the kiddies snicker in unison, hehe] This kid will be someone to watch while maybe playing along a little ‘deliverance’ bango tune. Nobody here will get that dirty joke. But in all seriousness, as a midfielder he might be the next best Bavarian star.

:: SO Hey folks, tune into the game every now and then. I’ll be following it just like the rest of the crazy fans screaming from their balconies.

Like

Unlike

WM2006  Print This Post 4 comments