German for beginners - Football Über Alles

It may be the World Cup where the trains run on time and the matches start on schedule but, says Tom Humphries, a moment, a fragment, an instant can change all that and make it all seem worthwhile

Vorfreude (1)
In his entertaining memoir, Refereeing Around the World, Arthur Ellis recalls the opening game of the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, an occasion which was also the opening day for the Maracana Stadium.

Brazil were to play Mexico. The local mayor, a man cursed with the prolix way of the breed, gave a speech which was inflicted on the masses via a dodgy public address system. Such was the noise that the referee couldn't hear the speech and blew the whistle to commence the match in the middle of it.

Now, a firing party who had been appointed to provide a 21-gun salute as the centre piece of the opening ceremony, panicked and got off their shots quickly, hitting the upper tiers of the new stadium and causing small amounts of concrete debris to dislodge and fall onto the people below. The gunfire provoked the release of hundreds of fireworks which spooked the doves of peace (or pigeons as Ellis insists they were) and soon the air was filled with gunsmoke and feathers, balloons, pyrotechnics and the screams of 150,000 lunatics.

The game had scarcely settled when Brazil scored. And then all hell really broke loose.

There were 15 local radio stations accredited to cover the game and a representative of each ran onto the field to interview the goalscorer.

Denied a clear shot of the celebrations, the ranks of photographers followed suit with a pitch invasion of their own.

Brazil won 4-0 and the occasion was deemed an epic success.

Sadly Germany this summer holds out no prospects of extra mural spontaneity. The media section of the tournament website trills with such promising developments as "Germany to Waive Noise Limit Laws!" and (be still my beating heart, this just in from Berlin) "Tower Sphere Turned Into Giant Football."

It is, says the website, "time to make friends in Berlin". Fair enough.

This will be the World Cup where the trains run on time. Where the matches kick off on schedule.

Where the tyranny of the media mixed zone reaches new heights. Every World Cup breeds its own brand of dictator; ordinary men and women get handed an orange bib and as soon as they put it over their heads turn "keeping the passageway clear" into a life-changing personal philosophy. We worry about the Germans in this regard.

(Our hero in this matter incidentally is Eric Cantona, who in Boston in 1994 found that he had suffered enough and promptly punched one of the orange bibs on the nose.)

Whatever this World Cup brings it won't be as exciting a production as 1974. A Haitian player tested positive for doping . . . the Haitian team doctor helpfully offered his professional opinion that the player was too stupid to dope himself . . . the player then got beaten up by the officials of his own football association . . . an Argentinian player got arrested for assaulting a chamber maid . . . the fabulous Poles, surprisingly having prevented England from qualifying, transpired to be a gift that kept on giving. They came third . . . total football and those cranky, intellectual, Dutchmen . . . the Scots and the Billy Bremner v Jimmy Johnstone little ginger war . . . East Germany v West Germany . . . der Bomber and so on.

This time there won't even be Keano. There won't even be a fuss about there not even being Keano. There won't even be an FAI.

The spirit of the FAI survives though. Robert Schaefer, German police chief, recently announced his force's brainy wheeze for coping with hooligans.

In trouble spots a policeman with a megaphone will describe "in the language of the pub" what is going on and what the police are doing. The idea is to soften the image of the police, make them less authoritarian to say, English, fans.

Somebody asked Robert what languages the jive-talking megaphone cops would be available in.

"Many of them (hooligans) will understand German. Right?"

Worry not. The best excitement in Germany will be cloaked from view by the pencil thin men from the PR companies. Those of us who are there will watch from a distance, through a window of orange bibs and official press releases and wonder if it's worth being there at all.

Then again. A moment, a fragment, an instant changes all that. To have been in Foxboro when an (artificially) pumped Maradona played his last World Cup game for Argentina against Nigeria or in the Velodrome when Bergkamp scored his unreasonably sublime goal against the Pumas four years later, or to have been in Seoul for the clap-happy progress of the South Koreans last time out, those moments made World Cup pilgrimages worthwhile.

And smaller less visible moments nourished too. Once on a train to Lyon during France 98 we saw an elderly French man, who had been sitting quietly with his wife, stand up and hush a carriage full of fearfully drunk Scots. He closed his eyes and sang Sur La Pont d'Avignon as his wife gazed up at him and then the couple shared their tomato sandwiches with tattooed Glaswegians.

On another train once, Dutch and Mexican fans (the sole occupants) organised a mobile Mexican wave, each carriage standing up in turn and waving and cheering while the train lurched and lolled.

We've been in bars crammed with dancing Brazilians, we've been shoehorned into shared cabs with muscular Nigerians, we've hidden behind bus shelters and walls from rioting Englanders and walked miles, lost in the company of Argentinians.

Mostly we come home and, to paraphrase David Foster Wallace, we say that the World Cup was a supposedly fun thing we'll never do again.

On the other hand the quadrennial venture outside the comfort zones of middle age provides a transfusion of adrenalin. In a universe where all forces drive us indoors into the sodium lit solitude of our TV rooms, there to text other humans as to wot we r doin, the World Cup gives us 31 days to go out and play, to rub shoulders and shake hands and put away our fears and prejudices. A true communal experience, classless and democratic, a celebration of the people and a simple game.

There's nothing like the World Cup. There's nothing like being there.

DRACHENFUTTEN (2)
The Swiss Tourist Board are beaming their ads around Europe. Here according to the Herald Tribune is the gist: its ads feature brawny lumberjacks and a come-hither dairyman, a real-life farmer and Mr Switzerland 2005 with an invitation to soccer widows to visit the Alps in summertime.

Few would confuse them with an official sponsor, but the link is unmistakable: "Dear girls, why not escape this summer's World Cup to a country where men spend less time on football and more time on you?"

And this is the nation of sickos that kept us out of the World Cup? Let's invade them.

Annoying as they are the Swiss may well have put their very efficient digits on the nub of one of the World Cup’s greatest problems. Whether you travel to the tournament or not there is a crushing downside to the World Cup experience. There is a good portion of the world which deliberately and cussedly turns its face away from the event and places its hands over its ears and sings loudly: “La- la-la. I’m–notlistening.” It would be crass, and politically incorrect, to generalize but generally these people are women. To be fair there are undoubtedly troubled souls out there who will claim to be World Cup Widowers. Nature plays the cruellest tricks. These are oul wans trapped in men’s bodies.

(It should be noted that a recent survey conducted by Duracell indicated that 94 per cent of men would never switch the team they supported no matter how bad things got, but 52 per cent of them would divorce if things weren’t going to plan. One hundred per cent were baffled as to what the survey had to with batteries but most thought Bill Clinton had been a smart man to call his daughter Chelsea.)

Anyway, not to brag, but I speak as one who has had an ongoing involvement with a woman. In fact it was this woman whom we called – in a state of mild, but forgivable, inebriation – from New York City in June of 1994. The purpose of the call was to say hello and to gauge the precise levels of national hysteria provoked by the man-walks-on-the-bloody-moon type moment in history that was Ireland beating Italy in Giants Stadium earlier that day.

The woman was baffled. She said that she had been driving to Wexford and that she “didn’t have the radio on” while doing so.

The plague to be avoided in the next five to six weeks is not England fans. It is not football. It is not jingoistic British tabloids.

It is the volcanic outpouring of articles about the fate of the “World Cup Widow.” These are pieces of literature which you should not let your servant read, let alone your wife. Let us, in the spirit of noble dissent down through the ages just say, down with this sort of thing.

Golf Widows we feel genuine compassion for. We would seriously consider taking part in a Telethon to eradicate the problem. In fact, in this the year of the Ryder Cup uber-bore we would implore Bono to become involved at a serious level.

However World Cup Widows have, as my therapist says, “very little to be whingeing about.” They are beneath our compassion. One month, every four years? Is it too much to ask? One month given to restoring some childhood romance to a brain which is befuddled with worry over miles per gallon and the meaning of Micheál McDowell? Why begrudge us? It’s just 64 matches. Five thousand, seven hundred and sixty minutes of football, not including half times and pre- and post-match analysis. Allow half an hour there for each game, presuming we have the right to record group games which are played simultaneously.

That’s just another 1,920 minutes of trimmings. That’s 7,680 minutes in total.

For the sake of argument we will allow 600 minutes for pouring delightedly through this magazine and 60 minutes a day for following World Cup coverage in your newspaper of choice, which is 1,860 minutes over the 31 days. In all then we have a media commitment of 2,460 minutes.

Thus, once every four years, in a very intense period of spiritual renewal, we ask for just over 10,140 minutes of grace. In other words, if you spaced out the time devoted to faithful observance over those four years (or 1,460 days), just under seven minutes a day would be devoted to the World Cup. Maximum.

For this the supplicant is rewarded by the acrid scent of burning martyr wafting in from the front garden as the World Cup Widow pushes the rusty old blade mower back and forth past the window while wearing an expression of noble but conspicuous suffering.

As Brian Clough once said, it only takes a second to score a goal. It takes more than a second to shut the window and draw the curtains. Somewhere, somebody is going to miss a goal being scored.

The victimhood cult of the World Cup Widow, devoid as it is of any aspirations towards parity of esteem, has given rise to the dangerous notion of reparation (3). In this the year of the great SSIA orgy, the twin concepts of guilt and reparation are dangerous things to be fooling around with. To prevent overheating in the economy the government would do well to provide subsidies for gift wrapped power mowers from May through June.

TREPPENWITZ (4)
My friend, the writer and raconteur, Mr Liam Mackey once watched Ireland play a game which was being arbitrated by a referee of Mediterranean aspect. The game didn’t go well. Under pressure of deadline Liam wrote a lengthy piece which included this line. “The referee was Greek but he was no homer.” In the forthcoming World Cup, should Germany suffer at the hands of a Greek referee (or a man called Simpson), readers of this paper can expect to see that line lifted and presented as minty fresh. This is not a case of Schreibfaulheit (5) but the symptom of one who has suffered all his life from Treppenwitz.

The World Cup is an odd working experience. If Ireland are participating the job generally involves long periods of misery where players stare balefully at reporters and the odd period of bliss when the team win and we hump their legs like ingratiating poodles. In doing this we are reflecting the national mood.

When Ireland aren’t there the routine is more leisurely. A game a day if possible and the perturbing knowledge that everyone watching at home on TV actually sees more than you see. By the end the audiences are bigger, the coverage is more extensive, there is nothing new under the sun, much less anything new which you can write. You are exhausted and homesick and because all your gear is in a press centre locker 600 miles away, you have been wearing the same underwear since late in the first round. You wish there was some value you could add to the copy. An insight. A joke. You sit near Liam Mackey in the press centre hoping to purloin a few bon mots.

Now you have Schreibfaulheit on top of your Treppenwitz and it make you a bit of a Scheisse.

SCHADENFREUDE (6)
There is no doubt that the end of Troubles in the north have brought many dividends. There has been a heavy cost however. BBC Northern Ireland are offering home produced comedy. Our lives are suddenly infested by people who feel that it is wrong to cheer against England. It is not wrong. It is fun. Cheering against England has nothing to do with us not seeing the funny side of all the centuries of oppression. It is a joy unto itself.

It is the joy of the Manchester City fan who sees United hammered. The Tranmere fan who hears of a disaster in Anfield or Goodison. The Rovers fan in his petty envy of the mighty Bohs. It is the fat man on the banana skin. It is football.

England’s exits are always traumatic, dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking (as in “I broke my heart laughing”). Those exits are the best entertainment at any World Cup.

Do you people really want to endure decades of jingoistic harking back to ’06? Go and convert the Scots or the Welsh. Then get back to us c/o The Trinidad and Tobago supporters club.

Ich werde ganz nervös, wenn ich Deutsch spreche (7)
Back in 1998, after a long hard day covering the World Cup under the merciless French sun and the pitiless demands of the sports editor, I took a decision. Hang the expense. Instead of limping a few miles to my lodgings I would take a cab. Mistake.

The cab was driven by an old woman who may on that day have been celebrating her 100th birthday. She had a local film crew in the cab with her, a cameraman in the front passenger side and a director squeezed back across the other side of the back seat keeping out of shot. The old woman also spoke a language or a dialect which was not familiar to one such as I who had studied French for several years in St Joseph’s CBS , Fairview, where my academic distinctions included several passes.

Our journey went like this. The old woman would roar something thoroughly incomprehensible to me. I would nod but the director would begin urgently gesturing with her hand for me to reply.

Gamely I decided to “stick to message” like a politician on Questions and Answers. I would just say those things which I was able to say.

If the Old woman of Lyon had told me for instance that this was her last day on earth and she’d always wanted to drive a cab, I know that I replied happily that I was Irish and offered an explanation for my presence. Or, as she would have heard it: “I am Ireland! Coupe de Monde!” Apparently this little scene was a major televisual hit in the entertainment starved Lyon area and I have since received several letters from Irish emigrants who describe the last moments of French friends who have died from laughter-induced asphyxiation while watching the clip.

Of the German language I can modestly say that I have only a smattering. Schnell! Schnell! Raus! Raus! Achtung! Scheiwenhunde! and finally a phrase I won’t be risking, ich liebe dich. I have also read Mark Twain’s classic essay, The Awful German Language. In his long and eloquent discourse Mr Twain highlights the problem of a mother tongue whose complications begin with an obsession with the gender of nouns.

In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.

Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print – I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

Gretchen: “Wilhelm, where is the turnip?”
Wilhelm: “ She has gone to the kitchen.”
Gretchen: “Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?”
Wilhelm: “It has gone to the opera.”

Twain goes on to address other flaws which make German an thoroughly impractical language for the World Cup traveller. He deals most movingly with the phenomenon of those long unutterable compact words which he alleges the Germans make up on the spot. Inspired by Twain, I am working on a novella which will read as if it has been translated in literal terms from the German. Here is a flavour. Tale of the World Cup Widow and its Sad Fate It is a hot Day. See the sun, how he shines! Ah the poor World Cup Widow, it is stuck fast in the long Grass; it has dropped its happy Face and its Hands have been blistered by the Mower. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes out, alas he is drowned by the raging of Motty.

Zweckgeneinschaft (8)
Here’s how they line out.
Puma: Italy, Poland, Paraguay, Ivory Coast, Iran, Angola, Ghana, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia. Nike: Brazil, Holland, Mexico, Portugal, US, Croatia, Australia, South Korea. Adidas: Argentina, Germany, France, Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, Japan. Umbro: England, Sweden. Lotto: Ukraine, Serbia & Montenegro. Marathon: Ecuador. Joma: Costa Rica. This means that Puma have the most teams but Adidas and Nike have the best chance of winning.

If you like England you should know that Beckham is Adidas but Rooney is Nike and Owen is Umbro and Jamie Carragher is Puma and Rio Ferdinand is Over-rated.

Adidas are official sponsors of the World Cup, a privilege for which they paid between 130 million and 150 million. Nike are cuter. They own Brazil. And for all his spikey independence and commendable intolerance of orange bibs, Nike own the corporate shill Eric Cantona.

Nike are ambush marketers but Fifa will never chastise them. This time out Fifa has 15 top line sponsoring partners who paid like Adidas did. Next time they will have just six. They’ll pay 1300 million each. Fifa wouldn’t like to cross Nike off the list of potentially interested parties. (By the way, in case you’ve got your SSIA money handy, one advertising hording at one World Cup game will, cost you 1500,000. To think that Davy Keogh said Hello for free all those years.)

Ditto Carlsberg. Although Budweiser is the official World Cup beer and the only one available in stadia in the home of beer, Carlsberg have been clever and produced an ad featuring heroes from England’s 1966 World Cup winning team (geezers like Bobby and Jack Charlton and Alan Ball ) as well as extras like Stuart Pearce, Bryan Robson, Peter Shilton, Des Walker, Terry Butcher, Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley and Peter Reid. They are playing in a park game. They run riot. They celebrate in the local. Carlsberg don’t do pub teams but if they did . . . Budweiser don’t like it but Fifa have to put up with it. In fact in April Fifa lost a court case in Germany where they sought to patent the world’s FOOTBALL WORLD CUP 2006.

However Fifa did succeed in suing the owner of a Burger King franchise in Israel for giving away free World Cup tickets as part of a promotion. Guess that rules him out of one of the £300 million sponsorship deals. Spare a thought for the little town of Tresbeck which is trying to hold a sponsor-free World Cup celebration. No free beer than?

Schlimmbesserung (9)
Late kick-offs. Earlier deadlines. Laptops with two million applications, all of which are unrelated to writing reports. Being constantly contactable on the mobile phone. ITV’s pitch-side analysis with Ally McCoist and Andy Townsend. Ryanair. Cheap hotels. The 32-team tournament. Football boots that weigh 10 ounces. The FAI. Peter Crouch. The mobile phone.

Dumm wie Bohnenstroh sein (10)
It is said that the soprano Kathleen Battle was once in a limousine and found the air to be a little cool so she used the limo telephone to call her manager, whom she asked to call the limo dispatch office to inquire if they might radio the limo driver to ask him to turn the air-conditioning down a tad.

Kathleen Battle may have thought she was a diva but compared to the stars of the World Cup she was a pragmatic roll-up-the-sleeves farm gal. She was also a genius.

In the Florida Hilton in 1994 we stood beside the partner of an Irish player as she loudly demanded that a bowl of “seasoned fruits” be brought out to the pool for her refreshment. When the poor flustered flunkie behind the desk gathered his wits he made an inquiry. “I’m sorry Ma’am, do you mean seasonal?” In fairness she stuck to her guns. “No. I think he said seasoned.” And this in a country which didn’t even offer a language barrier.

We have stood in a mixed zone in South Korea and gazed into the empty pools of David Beckham’s eyes as he prepares to speak. Beckham has a mixed zone technique. He walks out a few yards and stands still and Christ-like till the entire media pool is crushed against the railings in front of him. Today he is holding his football boots in one hand and his runners in the other hand. He is walking barefooted. This looks very cool. He says what he has to say and continues walking.

Except there is gravel just outside the mixed zone area and the last we see of him is his ludicrous tiptoeing as he tries to make his way across the gravel (Oooch! Ouch!) without hurting his valuable little feet. He still has footwear in either hand.

We have heard Phil Neville comment (well okay, we have read of his comment): “The Brazilians were South American, and the Ukranians will be more European.”

If the World Cup is the crossroads of the planet it is also the meeting place for many of the most pampered, most venial and most intellectually disadvantaged members of the species. And for 31 days it doesn’t matter! We salute them all.

Moechtest du schlafen? (11)
The World Cup is the best of us and the worst us. In Cologne they have installed Sexgaragen or Verrichtungsboxen. These translate literally as performance boxes” and resemble carports. They come equipped with condom and snack-vending machines.

The Germans expect a huge increase in the prostitution business. The country made prostitution legal four years ago but now dreads a tidal wave of sex trade victims being swept in from eastern Europe for the World Cup. Things will get worse they fear when the Cup is over and the competition for customers grows bitter. No such distresses for the teams. The Aussies, the most down-to earth of the qualified sides, will prepare for the tournament in a hotel with a restaurant the signature dish of which is an entree of goose-liver pate with braised chicory and citrus fruits for $43. Cheap when you consider that a serving of Breton-style turbot on white-bean puree will set you back $85, and a seven-course set menu costs about $186 – without wines. No prices were available for prawns on barbies.

England will pamper themselves in the Schlosshotel Buherhohe which describes its luxury as “embedded in an 18-hectare private castle park”.

And then there was that side who last time out travelled 23 hours by plane to prepare for the World Cup. Their journey was to an island which had no football pitch.

Sie denken es ist alles vorbei – und jetzt ist es das auch! (12)
The World Cup is more beautiful and more epic than the Olympic Games because it is about teams and nations. It is about a world speaking the one simple language.

World Cups are transcendent, defining the eras they belong in.

1970: Pele. 1974: Cruyff. 1978 Kempes. 1982 Paolo Rossi. 1986: Maradona. 1990: Paul McGrath, etc, etc.

You are 42 years old and every World Cup stands out in relief against the backdrop of humdrum life. Some player comes along and seizes each World Cup for himself, attaching his name to it forever. For different people perhaps it is different players but the effect is the same. World Cups delineate our lives. In one sense they don’t matter. Nobody dies (saving the poor Columbian Andres Escobar, assassinated after scoring an own goal while playing for Colombia in 1994). In another they matter hugely.

World Cups are about great national passions and the aggregate of many individual pleasures. Any football lover can remember where he (or she) was at and who they were hanging out with for every World Cup they have ever seen. (I watched most of 1978 at home after the Inter Cert but 1982 was watched in the bus station in Clontarf where I had a job watching buses. 1986 was watched in London, much of it in a Moroccan shebeen. 1990 involved pilgrimages to the Wexford Inn, and so on).

The World Cup matters because it places your little plot of this earth up on the big stage. The World Cup offers an impression which will dissolve, fairly or unfairly into national cliché. The Germans are clinical. The Italians are temperamental. The Brazilians are mesmerisingly rhythmical. The teams which nations put out say something about themselves. Sometimes they are an introduction. Did you feel the same about the Cameroon after 1990 and Roger Milla? Did Senegal seduce you the last time? Sometimes they are an affirmation. The Dutch and their cold brilliance, the Argentinians and their brittle passions, the English and their conservative solidity.

You know just about enough of what you are going to get with a World Cup, but there’s just enough mystery to keep you interested. The next few weeks will lodge in the head and annex the imagination. Goals, saves, controversies. All established in a brain which can’t remember what its owner had for dinner yesterday. Since the last World Cup we have become a remarkably more blended society.

One of the pleasures of not competing in Germany is that we shan’t be as obsessed with ourselves as we were during L’Affaire Keano. We can share the World Cup with the many Poles and Brazilians (to name but two new strains of Irish society) who live amongst us. Hopefully their joy shall be our pleasure too. One hundred and ninety seven teams began the World Cup qualifier series, all playing the one beautiful game. They played 847 matches, entertained billions and made millions. Two thousand, four hundred and sixty four goals have been scored so far on the way to the opening ceremony.

The greatest show on earth gets the greatest drumroll. It’s been four years. We’re ready.

FOOTNOTES

1. Vorfreude: What you feel when you are looking forward to something
2. Drachenfutten: German word roughly meaning “a peace offering from guilty husbands for wives”. More literal meaning is “dragon fodder”.
3. The best way to overcome these feelings of guilt and the entire concept of reparation is to become a sports journalist.
4. Treppenwitz: refers to the “clever remark that comes to mind when it is too late to utter it”.
5. Schreibfaulheit: Literally, “writing laziness”.
6. Schadenfreude: Germany beating England on penalties. Argentina doing likewise. That feeling.
7. Ich werde ganz nervös, wenn ich Deutsch spreche: Literally, “I get nervous when I speak German”.
8. Zweckgeneinschaft: Marriage of interests
9. Schlimmbesserung: German word for lamenting “a so-called improvement that makes things worse”.
10. Dumm wie Bohnenstroh sein: Idiomatic German phrase meaning, literally, to be as dumb as a bundle of bean straw. In other words, to be as thick as two short planks, to be very stupid.
11. Moechtest du schlafen? Would you like to go to bed?
12. Sie denken es ist alles vorbei – und jetzt ist es das auch!: They think it’s all over. It is now.