Home-court advantage

The FIFA World Cup benefits Germany, not only economically but in redefining its people as a friendly and hospitable nation

Lars Meyer Berlin

A month ago, it didn’t look all that good. Germany’s national football team had suffered a devastating loss in a friendly match against Italy in March and barely held on to a two-goal tie against Japan, a nation known for sumo wrestling and robot competitions rather than world-class football. So I booked a ticket to Amsterdam at 8 pm on July 9, thinking it would be convenient to arrive a day early for a seminar starting in The Hague next day.

Last night, I changed my mind. July 9 is the day of this year’s World Cup final, and as I am writing this piece, it seems like every one of us 80 million Germans firmly believes that we stand a serious chance of playing Brazil and winning the Cup on that very day. It would be Germany’s fourth title after 1954, 1974 and 1990, but it would be a special one: Germany is hosting the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and that, it seems, means far more than just home-court advantage for our team.

Much arithmetic has preceded the opening match on June 8 of what is often acclaimed to be the biggest sports event in the world. While sponsoring, advertising and the sales of television rights will earn the international football federation, FIFA, revenues of up to 1.7 billion Euros, the organising committee around Germany’s so-called Kaiser, or Emperor, football legend Franz Beckenbauer, is expecting 3.2 billion spectators in the stadiums, among them over 1 billion fans visiting from other participating countries. Research institutes have predicted that Germany’s economy will make extra profits of 1.5 to 3 billion Euros this summer, and perhaps 8 billion Euros, or 0.36 per cent of last year’s GNP, on the long run. At the same time, the country’s ailing labour market may account for up to 30.000 new jobs, mainly in services, tourism, and construction. And altogether, a boost in consumer confidence and tourism is expected to further boost the economy’s modest upswing.

The thing is, all the economic benefits of hosting the World Cup appear as pale mathematics compared to a far more notable impact that this World Cup has had on Germany during the last couple of weeks: it seems as though there has been a change of hearts as Germans’ post-war reluctance to openly show patriotism or even pride has yielded to a rediscovery of their identity as a nation. In “A time to make friends”, which is the World Cup’s official slogan, Germans have warm-heartedly welcomed their guests from all over the world but at the same time responded in unceremonious ways to the foreign fans’ display of their national pride and symbols. As flags in black, red and gold flaunt on thousands of cars and 700.000 fans blissfully celebrate the German team’s victories on the strip between Berlin’s Siegessäule and the Brandenburg Gate, there seems to be more about these four weeks than just a never-ending party. Some commentators speak of a “cathartic moment” for Germany and are reminded of the summer of 1954 when a nation living ashamedly in the political and economic ruins of the terrible war it had itself ignited saw its own confidence, hopes and companionship grow with each victory on the way to the national team’s first World Cup title. For the moment, nobody cares about the government’s decision two days ago to raise value-added tax and health care premiums, or about the ongoing debate on the devastating state of the budget. These four weeks are about the German people as a harmonious entity in a state of collective exhilaration and hospitality.

It’s far too early to tell whether the euphoria about our team and the event itself really symbolises a fundamental shift in the way we Germans feel about our role in the world, our past, or an increasing alienation among parts of our society. But it feels like we are afforded a glance through a window to get an idea of what could be. Who would have thought that immigrants from Turkey (whose team did not qualify) or Poland (who lost to Germany and were eliminated early in the preliminary round), who seemed to have retreated to isolated clusters of ever-growing cultural alienation and bitterness over discrimination and joblessness, would join in to their neighbours’ cheering for Klinsmann’s team and imitating the German players’ moves on the backyard lawn? Or that some of our own politicians’ warnings of cultural repugnance or even anti-Semitic violence in Germany’s unemployment-stricken eastern regions would vapourise in collective amazement over Ghana’s fighting spirit and the exotic fans from Trinidad and Tobago? I do hope that some of all this will stay behind when the fans fly out and our attention turns to back to how to pay our bills and get the country’s ailing economy and welfare system back in motion.

In any case, while there’s some great football still to be seen, the sport itself can do much to preserve Germans’ newfound unity and confidence. Most of the favourites cruised through the preliminary round, and the usual suspects have started to zeroing in on the big matches. Brazil has looked a bit rusty in the first two weeks, but their geniality and experience, paired with the sheer superiority that this team has exercised in the past twelve years, still intimidate any opponent. Argentina has been playing as dominantly as ever in recent years. The English squad has looked good, too, and so have Italy, who seem to be pulling their act together despite ongoing investigations of what could turn out to be the biggest scandal in football history and entail the exemption of Juventus and AC Milan from Italy’s first division.

As for Germany, I have already mentioned the potential that has led even the kinds of Diego Maradona and Pelé to count on the hosts as hot contenders. In the two years since he was put in charge, coach Klinsmann, himself a World and European Cup champion, has been rigorously committed to building a team of young players that combines unity and modesty with an easiness hardly seen in German squads of recent years. The new generation of leaders around captain Michael Ballack, Arsenal London goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, and striker Miroslav Klose have cultivated a dynamic, fast and at times jaunty game that draws from speed and explosive offensive rather than rock-solid defence and controlled forward motion.

Having scored eight goals in the three preliminary round matches, the Germans’ offensive seems set to overcome England’s notorious defence or the Argentines’ seemingly unshakable confidence. And since Brazil’s Ronaldo has been in the headlines less for his goals than for being overweight and partying it up in Frankfurt clubs, Germany’s young players surely don’t fear him as much as they did in 2002, when he won Brazil the title almost by himself by scoring two out of his overall eight goals in the final.

Of course it may all be over way before July 9 for the German team. But even in that case, it’s been a great four weeks of daily barbecues and a souvenir of at least five more pounds on my hips. Of jovial debates on why the Dutch will never win a World Cup title and how even my grandmother would have scored that goal or the other. And – the next time I take off for a trip abroad – with a very new kind of appreciation of how little it takes to inspire and unite this nation whose chronic hesitance and lack of passion I so often condemned.

Lars Meyer is a lawyer and freelance writer. He lives in Germany and the United States