Made in Germany

This is something I wrote for my column in Business Mirror at the height of the 2006 World Cup. It does sound dated in some places. But it's the forerunner of my last column titled GERMAN ENGINEERING.

Made in Germany

by rick olivares

When you hear the name Germany, the following immediately spring to mind: Mercedes Benz, BMW, the autobahn, German engineering, the Munich Olympics, Jesse Owens, the Berlin Wall, Oktoberfest, Frankfurters, and football. Ah, yes. Football. Outside that otherworldly football power with the Confederation de Brasiliero de Football on its team kits, the German national football team has had the winningest side.  

Since their loss to Brasil in the 2002 World Cup Finals, the German squad has won four straight this tournament with three in convincing fashion. The homeside may be delirious especially after a series of pre-World Cup disasters (including a 4-1 loss to Italy and various Bundesliga teams crashing out UEFA), but the amazing thing about their current 4-0 run and three straight shut-outs is that it must have that Der Fuhrer must be turning in his unmarked grave

Quite a few of the 22-man squad isn’t even purely German. Its powerful strike force includes a pair of Polish-borns in Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose; Ghanaians David Odonkor and Gerald Asamoah, and Swiss-born Oliver Neuville.

This is one of the many taboos Coach Jurgen Klinssman, who currently resides in sunny California, is breaking on his way to Berlin, the site of their quarterfinals match and the finals if they do make it there. To rankle even more nerves, his chief scout is Swiss and his trainer an Amerikaner.

Klinssman says that his team of native and naturalized Germans as well as his new system is “an opportunity to redefine Germany” in the face of the global changes sweeping the game. Why not? The Socceroos have seven players of Croatian descent. The Les Bleus since their title-winning team of ’98 have fielded teams that reflect France’s rich colonial past. Angola with the Portuguese-born Paulo Figueiredo and Mexico bolstered by the Brazilian-born Sinha are a few of the sides that have scoured the Earth for prized pick-ups of ethnic descent.

A critic of his country’s robotic play on the pitch, the former World Cup hero has abandoned Germany’s traditional 3-5-2 formation in favor of a more aggressive 4-4-2 attack (now that is something Nazis can relate to: a blitzkrieg) where even the defenders swarm onto enemy territory. Their 10 goals in the tournament (with four coming from Klose) are tops along with Argentina, their quarterfinals foe. Their much-maligned defense has only yielded two goals. 

Football has the power to change the world. When Didier Drogba and the affectionately named Elephants of the Coite De Ivoire qualified for the Finals, warring factions called a truce to cheer their team on. When Angola qualified for their first-ever Finals appearance, team captain Akwa proudly exclaimed “that we have proved to the world that Angola isn’t all about oil, war, and poverty.”

German kids today are growing up and seeing that the men who wear those traditional white jerseys with the Deutscher Fusbal Bund stitched just above where the heart are an example of the cultural mix that soccer has brought. With the German economy springing back to life under Angela Merkel; these games are a perfect complement to showcase to the world what is currently made in Germany.