Of course I wanted Spain to win. Except for the Germans, everybody wanted Spain to win. The TV commentators didn't even pretend to be neutral. The official reasons were that they were the better team and they played beautiful football. Their victory, therefore, was a matter of simple justice. But, it occurs to me, if Germany had been better and more beautiful, we would still have wanted Spain to win. Germany, as a nation, inspires little affection or enthusiasm. Is this still the hangover of the war and the still potent imagery of Nazism? Or is it merely the fact that, in Europe, they always feel like the overdog?
Monday, June 30, 2008
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Often wondered what it must be like to have most of the rest of the world against you, as a nation - although inside Germany's own borders the Anti-Germans exist, and flourish.
ReplyDeleteLovers of Bush, Marx, and the other Karl, Rove (what a collection!), they failed to welcome the end of the cold war, fearing it might give birth to a fourth Reich, and a return of anti-semitism, and at a rally a couple of years ago protesting against the flattening of Dresden sixty years ago, were seen unfurling banners saying 'Bomber Harris, do it again'.
Does Germany still have 'issues' with WW2?...er yes. Do we still have issues with Germany, going back even further? Yes Bryan, we do...and isn't it fun?
Mahlerman
are those two options mutually exclusive?
ReplyDeleteAh, foopball...I wasn't even aware who was playing. (I still wanted Spain to win.)
I think it is at least 80% the overdog thing. It is really a huge complement to them.
ReplyDeleteOf course, some of us wanted Germany to win, even more than we wanted Spain to lose. How could we support a team coached by an unreconstructed racist like Luis Aragones: "The row over Aragones intensified on Friday as he attempted to justify his comment about Henry earlier in the season.
ReplyDeleteHe told Spanish newspaper El Mundo: "Reyes is ethnically a gypsy. I have got a lot of gypsy and black friends.
"All I did was to motivate the gypsy by telling him he was better than the black. "
Often wondered what it must be like to have most of the rest of the world against you, as a nation...
ReplyDeleteErm...that would be us, too, Mahlerman - or specifically, the English.
However, the Germans are deservedly disliked, whereas everyone else is just jealous of the English and our invincible cricket, football and rugby teams...
Precisely, the Germans feelings for us however , pity.
ReplyDeleteWhen my Polish au pair arrived home last night she asked me why all the Irish people she had met over the weekend had been supporting Spain. I blathered on for a few minutes about how the Irish always support the underdog (being one themselves), and how the Germans have won enough already and it would be nice for Spain to win something for a change, and that Spain had played some lovely football and deserved to win on that basis alone. I could tell by the look in her eye, that she wasn't buying it. So finally, with a shrug, I had to admit that perhaps it did have something to do with the war. Silly, really, but there you go. We just can't let go, move on, find closure. They only tried to take over the world. A crazy idea. We should pity those who harbour such delusions. Like we pity George Bush. The fact that the word Nazi has entered the teenage lexicon as a term of endearment for a capable parent doesn't help. And that the short, moustached fellow appears to have a channel dedicated entirely himself. None of this helps us forget, really, does it? Not that we should forget, of course. No, no, that would be stupid. We mustn't forget.
ReplyDeleteIf she was Polish I'm sure she had a fair idea, Neil.
ReplyDeleteEnglish football fans get a lot of tutting from more 'enlightened' types for their constant harping on about the war when we play Germany ("10 German bombers", "Two World Wars and One World Cup" etc).
As someone who enjoys visiting Germany and drinking the outstanding beer, I am ambivalent about it.
Part of me thinks yes, we should all grow up, move on, look to the future. But then a bigger part of me thinks: well, it wasn’t that long ago, and it was very very bad; so sod it, as a nation they can live with a few decades of football fans reminding them about it.
The 1972 team that demolished England at Wembley were Gods - Beckenbauer, Muller and Netzer. Then Cruyff came along and stole their thunder in '74. We don't like 'em partly because of folk memories of the war, but also because after the early 70's they became lumbering and dull, invariably winning on penalties after having a relatively easy ride to the final stages. A bit like us really, except for the winning bit.
ReplyDeletei suspect it's also partly that they are in some ways very English; or we are in some ways very Germanic, might be more accurate. Some of the loathing of the French may be down to this partial kinship. Until 1066 the British were Germanic, Danish, Celtic; the language was Germanic. After 1066 we became somewhat Frenchified...i wonder if some distrust of the French comes from being invaded and taken over by them (or the Normans, same thing, really).
ReplyDeletePartly the war no doubt but that's a convenient excuse for simple envy, I suspect: the Germans have more money than us. And unlike us they are good at technical stuff which means they still have a motor industry that produces excellent cars and industries producing a range of other items which certain folks are keen to own and show off. The Brits are pirates and raiders at heart, always in search of a quick and easy buck and damn the consequences. Over here, that match would have been watched on a huge number of TVs that fell off lorries, but not so in Germany.
ReplyDeleteMark - yes, that's the Germans' problem: too many workers, not enough Del Boys.
ReplyDeleteIt's not envy, it's contempt.
Also, Germans have heads shaped like cardboard boxes. It's hard not to resent such a folk.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's a good point, Brit. It's hard to imagine a programme like Minder ever being made in Germany, featuring an "entrepreneur" from a used-car lot in, say, Düsseldorf. It would cause a national uproar. Whereas in France of course the makers of a French Minder would simply be arresting for trying to lampoon the President.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's all the neighbours insulted today. Now what else to do ...
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ReplyDeleteIf the krauts are so comfortable with themselves why did they invent the word angst? There's a few too many self hating anglos on this blog. Forza elberry.
ReplyDeleteWell the whole shindig was refreshing since we didn't have to read anything about "wags" or see little Rooney's angry potato face scowling after Ingerland lost. Ditto Beckham poncing about. This German thing is indeed perplexing. Having known many I'd put it down to the alternation of arrogance and dogmatism with handwringing about being really, really badder than anyone else. Harry Enfield got it in one with the twerp student getting more and more annoyed about the Brits on a Thames pleasure boat who ignored his apologies about bombing London...but what do I know?
ReplyDeleteAny sporting competitor who is well coached seems slightly more German. I doubt their apparent confidence is all down to good coaching but we're certainly nobbled by its absence and, perhaps more fundamentally, class division.
ReplyDeleteVeddy, veddy strange. Is not the British royal family more German than English? This seems to me germane.
ReplyDeleteBut it's nationalism that causes so many problems, large (war) and small (football rivalries). Naturally I come from the most despised nation in the world.
Certainly nationalism causes problems when it becomes a rampant superiority-complex nuttiness - German-style nationalism, if you like.
ReplyDeleteIn the correct doses (patriotism as opposed to jingoism) it's a useful antidote to worse isms - most obviously communism in the former Soviet countries, but also racism, since national identity can transcend ethnicity.
The Royals may be krauts, but they're our krauts.
Just to add a bit of relevance to my comment, I suppose the problem from the point of view of being loved for a well-coached team is that coaches tend to believe that winning is everything and how you do it, nothing. And you don't get the impression of them wanting to be loved. Of course, wanting love too much doesn't help either but it's refreshing in football, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteelberry you idiot, your supposed to unpack Germans before viewing them.
ReplyDeleteGermany has a good supply of hookey goods operatives, Maintz is the European centre for ersatz Panerai, I bought one five years ago, 100 quid, still going strong, made in Turkey, Galataseray Panerai. The Germans would ho ho ho at this post, they think we are funny, having a lousy health service, rubbish education system, obscenely incompetent civil service, seriously overpriced restaurants, no manufacturing industry, unhealthy obsession with house purchase, riddled with social and intellectual snobbery, dominated by the banking low life, running around like blue arsed flies with fraught expressions on our faces, uncomfortable in our national skin, sinking in a swamp of immigration, unable to speak any other language.
Then not being able to do a thing about it, It puzzles them greatly, they pity us.
Perhaps the antipathy comes from the fact that Germany reached the final whilst England failed to qualify for the tournament. The Aragones afair is a wonderful comment on our PC universe. Aragones called Thierry Henry "a black shit", it was calling him black that got him into trouble the shit was OK
ReplyDeleteDisintegrating social structure,collapse of family life, horrendous inner city street crime, criminally bad justice system dominated by greedy playacting barristers and on the gravy train solicitors, a police force out of control, snooped upon by local government Stasi, stolen from by mindless corrupt politicians, no dentists, hospitals poisoning patients, flooded, running out of electricity, greasy fish and chips, Neil Kinnock, Mandelson, Brown, Balls, Smith, Sting, Vine, Paxman, The Windsors, Cooper, Gill, Clarkson, especially Clarkson,The plod Blair, Toynbee, Sugar, Tesco, Asda, Channel four, Scottish Borders Council, Alexander, Salmond, Milliband, Archer, Dimbelby, Simon Jenkins, Keira Knightley, the BBC. You arrogant, triumphalist, square headed Krauts must be just a tad envious ? Some little Englanders seem to think that you consider yourselves superior, fool that I am for asking but why would that be ?
ReplyDeleteJaysus, Malty, you're on a roll! You could write the Brit version of "Howl."
ReplyDeleteSusan -- American ineptitude in soccer may be the only thing saving us from being hated beyond redemption.
ReplyDeleteMalty: I'm flattered that you consider Germans to be so well-informed, but we aren't. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteMy impression was always that England's WWII victory is so central to its sense of identity that letting go of anti-German sentiments would mean letting go of that sense of English moral superiority.