Tweet
World Cup victory confirms Germany supremacy on almost every measure
After so many years of commanding respect the nation should rejoice that its football is finally recognised as beautiful
Chancellor Angela Merkel with the Germany team
Chancellor Angela Merkel with the Germany team after their victory over Argentina in the World Cup Final. Photograph: Guido Bergmann/Handout/EPA
It cannot surely be long before Angela Merkel is pictured placing a consolatory arm around David Cameron, after being overheard lecturing Vladimir Putin on the trouble with 4-4-2, and brochures extolling Germany will become popular in high-street travel agencies as the world wakes up to a much-underrated destination. Who needs Barcelona when you’ve got Bavaria?
In boardrooms around the globe, football club owners will be instructing their chief executives to “get me a German”. Across assorted time zones it is no longer enough for a goalkeeper to have “safe hands”. Thanks to Manuel Neuer the era of “sweeper-keepers”, boasting strong lines in fancy footwork, is upon us.
With the death of tiki-taka now rubber-stamped, aspiring football coaches will eschew study trips to Spain, instead flocking to a rather large patch of Europe stretching from the Baltic to the Alps.
Anxious to replicate what Miroslav Klose describes as his country’s “Super Blend” of aesthetics and über-efficiency, the Football Association will inevitably introduce a five-year plan designed to accelerate the implementation of German-ification throughout all areas of the English game. They might stop just short of equipping the computer screen-savers at St George’s Park and Wembley with images of Joachim Löw/Merkel/Thomas Müller/Sami Khedira super-imposed on Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue.
As Löw – his somewhat patchy record in club management long since forgotten – is pursued by the Champions League glitterati, British politicians may begin wondering whether the startling synchronicity between the philosophies behind Germany’s economic and footballing revivals is entirely coincidental. Parallels are bound to be explored.
From Dresden to the Dutch border, Germans should swiftly come to terms with finally being recognised as being truly beautiful after all. After so many years of commanding respect, admiration – albeit sometimes grudging – and even fear, a football evolution that, in typically methodical manner, began in 2000 has culminated in a velvet revolution.
Although it is symbolised by a fourth World Cup trophy, and first since 1990, this international coup was essentially pulled off during that astonishing 7-1 semi-final demolition of Brazil. When Juninho declared that Germany were playing as his compatriots once did and watching them had made him “very happy”, it felt like an epiphany. Not to mention the vindication of an awful lot of meticulous hard work. In the space of 90 extraordinary minutes it seemed as if a nation’s reinvention had been all but completed.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/...cy-every-level
After so many years of commanding respect the nation should rejoice that its football is finally recognised as beautiful
Chancellor Angela Merkel with the Germany team
Chancellor Angela Merkel with the Germany team after their victory over Argentina in the World Cup Final. Photograph: Guido Bergmann/Handout/EPA
It cannot surely be long before Angela Merkel is pictured placing a consolatory arm around David Cameron, after being overheard lecturing Vladimir Putin on the trouble with 4-4-2, and brochures extolling Germany will become popular in high-street travel agencies as the world wakes up to a much-underrated destination. Who needs Barcelona when you’ve got Bavaria?
In boardrooms around the globe, football club owners will be instructing their chief executives to “get me a German”. Across assorted time zones it is no longer enough for a goalkeeper to have “safe hands”. Thanks to Manuel Neuer the era of “sweeper-keepers”, boasting strong lines in fancy footwork, is upon us.
With the death of tiki-taka now rubber-stamped, aspiring football coaches will eschew study trips to Spain, instead flocking to a rather large patch of Europe stretching from the Baltic to the Alps.
Anxious to replicate what Miroslav Klose describes as his country’s “Super Blend” of aesthetics and über-efficiency, the Football Association will inevitably introduce a five-year plan designed to accelerate the implementation of German-ification throughout all areas of the English game. They might stop just short of equipping the computer screen-savers at St George’s Park and Wembley with images of Joachim Löw/Merkel/Thomas Müller/Sami Khedira super-imposed on Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue.
As Löw – his somewhat patchy record in club management long since forgotten – is pursued by the Champions League glitterati, British politicians may begin wondering whether the startling synchronicity between the philosophies behind Germany’s economic and footballing revivals is entirely coincidental. Parallels are bound to be explored.
From Dresden to the Dutch border, Germans should swiftly come to terms with finally being recognised as being truly beautiful after all. After so many years of commanding respect, admiration – albeit sometimes grudging – and even fear, a football evolution that, in typically methodical manner, began in 2000 has culminated in a velvet revolution.
Although it is symbolised by a fourth World Cup trophy, and first since 1990, this international coup was essentially pulled off during that astonishing 7-1 semi-final demolition of Brazil. When Juninho declared that Germany were playing as his compatriots once did and watching them had made him “very happy”, it felt like an epiphany. Not to mention the vindication of an awful lot of meticulous hard work. In the space of 90 extraordinary minutes it seemed as if a nation’s reinvention had been all but completed.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/...cy-every-level
