When soccer turns politics

Canadians will understand that soccer is more than just a game. Every hockey game between a Canadian and an US-American team is always somewhat political, or to be better said, a diplomatic issue. The lasting differences between the two countries, occasionally boosted by the mutual dislike of their people, make hockey a show of national pride. Soccer, at least in Europe, isn´t any different.

Yesterday´s game between England and Germany is one of the most classic duels in soccer history and it has everything that a good match would need to become an awesome event for the fans. It has the emotion, the political dimension and even more important, it has the drama! The same could be said about a game between Germany and the Netherlands or Germany and Poland.

Two words are enough to describe the core of the emotions at a Germany vs. England match: “Wembley” and “Second World War”. Whereas Germany has stable and friendly relationships with its neighbour states today, the past is not settled between the British and the German people. British still call the Germans “Nazis” and even worse, they don´t expect them to be anything else. It is not a bad joke or famous British black humour but unfortunately an ongoing stigma that is passed from one generation on to the next. Yesterday every TV spectator could see English fans in Second World War uniforms. Sadly enough, those men were barely older than twenty. The World War, one would think, has nothing to do with their world. Both countries´ yellow press media make it only worse. The standard vocabulary used in headlines on game-day could be right out of a 1944 newspaper. The battle royal.

Still, the situation has somewhat changed during the last, say then years. There are too many young Germans nowadays that oppose the war-zone-talk in the yellow press prior to games like that. Whether this is because Germany´s society has really developed a lot or because Germans want to overcome the past so much is a question not easy to answer. Is Germany a modern nation in the 21st century or is the soccer-party nation from 2006 just another make-over for a nation that still desperately searches for a source for new national self-esteem. Soccer is just one possible tool for achieving the latter because next to the many thinks soccer is, foremost it is about national pride.

2006 Germany has celebrated the World Championships utterly peacefully and with fans all over the world. Still, already in 2006 and even more so today, critical voices claim that the massive pride, the multitude of flags, the new lust in singing the national anthem is nothing more than a revival of an over-nationalistic past. Those who receive their pride from their nationality and thus from distinguishing themselves from others can finally show off that new pride again with their beloved national symbols 2006 it seemed that Germany had waited decades to dust off the good old flags and give them a good waving. Where are flags so important, why are people so obsessed about them? Why do people wait forty years bring them out and the whole atmosphere in a country changes from bad to better just because of three stripes in red, gold and black? Bystanders in Germany talk about the party nation on the edge. The climate seems to be a little too forced, a little too aggressive to be really enjoyable. Germany must win, Germany needs a boost in self-esteem.

There might be a point. Germany has been through a lot in the past few years: a rough economic situation that was only fuelled by the global economic crisis combines with the essential depressive nature of the German people. Depression and Angst, there are German things, a core of our personality. It is cynical that Germany´s national goal keeper as a consequence of his severe depression committed suicide last year. Soccer is more than a game but it is more than politics too. It is an outlet, a catharsis for a nation´s emotional set. Germany needs to win, because Germany really needs something that could be enjoyed, something that is just light and funny. Once in a while, people might think, that if the ever calm and reserved Germans could let out some of the emotions they are showing at a soccer tournament, a lot would have been different. People want to be playful. We always admire our more care-free and bubbly neighbours in the south, yet we know that we can never be that way. Only at carnival and while watching soccer we can behave like we want.

And isn´t soccer all about emotions, all about the drama? Today was a hard day for the English soccer, not only because they lost an important game and were sent back home, no because a national trauma was relived and refunded for a new generation. England was in Wembley again, denied an equalizer. Needless to say, and maybe a biased opinion, that Germany would have won anyway. Maybe it was just the karma, the World War uniforms that should go where they belong: to a museum, to teach the upcoming generations about what it means when millions have to suffer because of an inferiority complex that one nation amongst them has harboured for too long.
It was good to see the young and wonderfully talented German team seem to be undisturbed the weight of the past that lasted on yesterday´s game. Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski have their origins in Poland, Mesut Özil represents the big Turkish community in a state that has long hit the road to a multi-cultural society. Sami Khedira was born in Germany, but comes from an Arabic family, Cacau is Brazilian-born. It is not their past after all. They were in the stadium to play soccer and they did some wonderful soccer. It was a first step into a new century and maybe, ob day, soccer will just be a very important game. As a German, it was refreshing to see the game on Canadian TV. The commentator focused on the game played, the soccer shown and not at all on the historic burden between the opponents. Enjoyable!