Few places on earth are more evocative of sporting history than the Olympiastadion in Berlin. The evidence is preserved in the remodelled stadium that it was here where the black American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals in 1936 to ridicule Adolf Hitler’s notion of white Aryan supremacy — and here on Friday where modern, unified Germany finally began to believe that its young team can win this World Cup.
As Germany won the penalty shootout against Argentina, two things happened. Angela Merkel, the country’s first woman chancellor and the first to be raised in the former East Germany, embraced Franz Beckenbauer, the Kaiser of football. And down on the pitch, where Jürgen Klinsmann celebrated a victory that nobody had expected this soon, the Argentina coach, Jose Pekerman, quit.
Germany had doubted Klinsmann’s work and the fresh ideas he is importing from America, and doubted themselves. Now, on the new wave of patriotism that the nation has not allowed itself previously, they are playing a double game. In the streets they are putting on the biggest party in the world. On the pitch, a little like Germany of old, the message to Argentina, and thus to the football world, was: you do not beat the Germans in their own backyard.
Their win, from a goal down against what had looked the best of the 32 teams so far, was strong, it was mentally tough and it caused Pekerman to lose his nerve and take off his most creative talent to try to muscle out the contest. “They adapted to our strengths,” Klinsmann said. “We have a young team, they are growing, and they were a bit hectic and nervous in the first half. I said to them, ‘It’s okay, stay certain, and things will settle’.”
Stay certain. Klinsmann has done just that over the two years during which he was vilified for working by remote control from California. He stayed true to his bold ideas that football is a positive sport, you go for goal and you prepare for extra-time and beyond. Finally, his people are with him. Out in the Fan Meile leading to the Brandenburg Gate, which once was part of the wall that separated East and West Berlin, his face was on a screen 60m square. “Danke Klinsi”, said a young fan’s banner in a crowd of 750,000.
It was suggested yesterday that 90% of all German television sets were switched on to that penalty lottery. The Germans who said in polls before the World Cup began that their team could not win this trophy apparently reached the same proportion. There is a swing in entirely the opposite direction.
“We have a team and a real leader,” said one fan. “He has done a wonderful job preparing the Mannschaft. I hope he carries on for a long time.”
That fan? Mrs Merkel. It has been fascinating watching her as this tournament, and this mammoth outpouring of national pride, has unfolded. In the beginning she was straight-laced, almost prim, unsure of whether to applaud Germany’s goals lest that appear undiplomatic to the visiting head of state next to her. But Angela Merkel, unlike her husband, who is no fan, was a follower of football in 1996, when Germany won the European Championship at Wembley, with a certain J Klinsmann full of goals.
Times, and the leadership, change in politics and sport. Watching the liberation of German nationalism, and finding nothing unreasonable or frightening in it, it takes neither a politician nor a soccer expert to appreciate that today’s Germany has put history behind it, except perhaps on the field, where it is growing the skin of old.
Friendship was put aside in the opening exchanges, when Klinsmann’s players imposed themselves physically. We had come to the stadium to see how the host nation would take defeat. They wouldn’t show us. They went behind but summoned the will to take the game to those dreaded penalties. There was no question of whose nerve would hold then.
For those of us travelling around Germany, this has been an uplifting experience. The people have sustained a remarkable openness, a friendship that cannot be faked or ordered. We have felt it in the parks and the city squares, where the big-screen concept has been a revelation to the tens of thousands of ticketless fans.
Only a few times has one come across anybody showing belligerent triumphalism, including yesterday in and around Gelsenkirchen. The songs that our “lads” are singing went out with the war, and, somebody should tell them. So did the ignorant behaviour.
But this is a few hundred among the 50,000 English people who are as much a part of the festival here as anybody else. Germany’s “Time to Make Friends” notion has been sustained 24 hours a day even in places off the World Cup map. Merkel has let down her guard and become a joyous supporter of her boys. It is difficult for an elected politician to resist the rising tide of popularity and the evidence that football is boosting parts of the German economy as well as its spirit. For that spirit to flourish it needed Germany, a team that had deluded the world by talking down its prospects and by failing to win against any leading nation since 2004, to change its nature. Klinsmann observed before Friday: “If we lose against Argentina, the debate will start all over: Wouldn’t it be better to play more cautious? Shouldn’t we first secure the defence and play counterattack?” His whole concept, from having played abroad in Italy and in England and from living in the United States, has been to do as he did as a player. He goes for the main chance, he risks what happens behind him, he imports fitness training and psychology from America. And he doesn’t listen to voices telling him it’s all too gung-ho, too un-German. Merkel, herself new in leadership, has watched the response of the people who are electorate and fans of the Mannschaft, and has grown bolder by the match.
Her support for Klinsmann, knowing the knives were out for him before the tournament, was like a well-timed pass to create a goal. The chancellor has caught the national fever and Klinsmann’s side is evolving just as he optimistically predicted in this newspaper last October.
After the first match, when Costa Rica scored twice against his team, the defence looked weak. “We have to work on a few things,” he said. Three weeks and four wins later, he says: “I’m happy, proud and thankful. We have a team that has grown together over the past six weeks and they want to be world champions.”
Danke, Klinsi.
