I'm going to sew up this England thing as quickly as I can, so that I can start babbling inanely about my experiences, and Germany's auspicious rise to football supremacy.
Henry Winter, a noted writer for the Telegraph, reckons that England failed because of tactics. Only two players on the team, he notes, play in a 4-4-2 system for their club. He reckons that he failure to switch to a 4-5-1, the bizarre decision to play Gerrard on the left, and the usual old chestnut of playing Gerrard and Lampard in the same team all add up to an England team that are out of sorts, muddled, and needlessly defensive.
I do not disagree, but when trying to find the criminal in this particular mystery, tactics are not my prime suspect. Good players can always adapt to different positions and different systems, generally quite quickly. José Mourinho proved that when he took over at Chelsea, and Arséne Wenger has earned great praise for shuffling one Thierry "I can't stop handballing" Henry from the wing into a central striking role.
The analysis that made the most sense to me was that of John Barnes, who said that England lack a footballing identity - a spirit or a collective personality that dictates the style of play. Xavi Hernandez, following Spain's win over Chilé, said that La Furia Roja had found their "trademark style." Germany has changed their style since the turn of the millennium from being the efficient, cold-blooded 1-0 assassins and penalty shoot-out heartbreakers of the 80s and 90s to the swashbuckling cut-and-thrust passmasters that they are now. Having a managing team that included and continues to include a pack of strikers like Klinsmann and Bierhoff helped. But the bottom line is that if you point out a national team, you can generally describe their method of play in terms of a general philosophy. Holland thrive on flashes of individual brilliance that liberate team-mates from being marked by opponents. The Japanese are counter-attack specialists that rely on fitness to contain other teams' attacks. England? In 1966, they were wingless wonders that played 4-3-3, and players like Greaves and St. John had no place in the structure. They were direct, they liked hitting balls over the top, and forcing opponents to face their own net. England now? They change their tactics to suit the players that the FA consider to be the most marketable, or the selections of the biggest Premiership stars. Gerrard must be in the team, but Lampard and Barry cannot play wide, so they must be the central midfielders, and because Rooney needs another striker up front to play 4-4-2 (of course, they MUST play Rooney), that means there are only two central midfield roles... etc., etc.
A survey done about a decade ago in England asked people to vote for the person they considered the greatest Englishman that ever lived. William Shakespeare just barely nudged out Isaac Newton for the big nod. In order for England's national team to succeed, they must approach the game with the scientific discipline and mathematical accuracy of Newton, and, once they know which play they out to perform, audition the players to find out who is best suited to the roles that are required. The current pattern of hoping a collection of disparate characters will somehow harmonize has proven ineffective. England needs a cause, a vision, a theme in which all of the players can believe and to which they can subscribe. If Gerrard absolutely must play on the left side, give him a Shakespearean motif that inspires him to make that sacrifice, and a Newtonian logic that shows a causal link to positive results.
Here endeth the lesson.
Now, as for yesterday's game, it was a bit of lunacy just getting there. And there the lunacy became fantasy made real.
First off, we decided to take the train from Kenilworth in the Southern Suburbs into Cape Town proper. Normal Saturday service would dictate that there should be one train into town every hour. Being a special occasion, what with the game and the Fan Park, and the Fan Walk, that amount of trains was doubled. My father and I waited for 20 minutes before the first train arrived, ten minutes behind schedule. It was so absolutely jam-packed full of humanity that there was no way any person on the platform could board. The platform was also getting uncomfortably full, and it was starting to get later in the afternoon. After my aunt and cousin showed up at the station, we decided to take a minibus. We jammed ourselves into the little vehicle along with another dozen people or so, and I found myself wedged uncomfortably into a seat with insufficient legroom. My femoral length exceeded the distance between the seat-back of my seat, and the seat back of the seat in front of me, so my legs actually pushed the seat ahead of me until my knees locked in the spot, and every pothole became a fresh hammer to my patellae. It was like Malawi all over again.
My father finally tallied that there were 19 people in the bus as we barrelled north on the Main Road.
The other three eventually tired of the increasing crush of humanity as the number of people increased, and the route became more and more funnelled. Police had cordoned off a number of side streets, and all pedestrian traffic was directed into the single street that led to Green Point Stadium. By the time my father, Liesl, and Jenny had abandoned the route, and began to try and elbow their way to the Waterfront, it was just after 1500h, and approximately 100,000 people stood between me and the gates. Kick-off was to be at 1600h.
It was a warm, sunny day. In fact, the warmest and sunniest day I've ever experienced in Cape Town. As the minutes ticked by, and the seething mass of people slowly oozed past the samosa kiosks and porta-potties by the streetside, I became increasingly irritated at the fact that most of the people didn't... COULDN'T... have tickets, and were just larking about, stopping every few feet to take more pictures, wipe the runny noses of their brats, drink bottled water, or just stare meaninglessly into the distance.
Eventually, the clot of people that encased me slithered just off the main "Walk" street and toward the stadium entrance. And then stopped. It took another 20 minutes to get the fifty feet forward over the crest of a hill and get to a police cordon that stopped people from advancing to the queues for frisking and metal detection. I finally made it through that and into the stadium proper just as the national anthems were booming out over the PA system.
Then, I discovered someone in my seat, the last seat in row 10 - just spitting distance from the left goal-post of Manuel Neuer. Don't worry, the two Deutschland-tat-bedecked gents in the row said, the seat just in front is open. Blinking slightly, I shrugged and sat in the last seat in row 9. I had just settled in and was getting used to such a low, flat view of the game when Thomas Müller headed the Germans into the lead at the other end of the pitch. The Argentinian fans was aghast. As I hoarsely bellowed abuse at a shocked and disbelieving Maradona for being a "bloated, cheating drug addict," two lads who had body-painted Argentinian uniforms onto themselves introduced themselves, and had the ticket for row 9, seat 16. Ah, I tried to explain, these blokes here...
The two Germans looked at one another before the one in my seat (row 10, seat 16) jumped up and sprinted up three rows to talk to a man sitting next to a seat containing nothing but a German national flag. He came back and told me that I could sit there, and the lads with blue and white cracked paint flakes all over themselves could sit in row 9. I picked up my stuff and sat next to a very nice German fellow whose company had stationed him in South Africa, and whose English was superb. I spent the rest of the game in row 12, seat 1, and it took until about the 30th minute for another Argentinian fan to show up with a ticket for row 10, seat 15. One of the two German men then shifted and moved to an empty seat a few rows up. A few minutes later, both he and the man sitting in my original spot had dashed off, and I spotted them later in the middle of a crowd of rabid German fans more directly behind the net. Conclusion: somehow, despite all of the security precautions and ticketing hullabaloo, these two had managed to get in without a ticket, and were just surfing around to any unoccupied seats. That would have been supremely easy in Port Elizabeth, where sales were typically a couple thousand shy of capacity, and the weather kept another few thousand ticket-holders home. The attendance at Green Point was announced at 64,100. That means that, despite all of the warnings about total sell-outs, etc., the stadium was not completely full, so there might be just enough empty seats for the two freeloaders to get by. And indeed they did.
As for the game - it was ridiculously one-sided. The Argentinians hadn't really faced any opposition in their previous four matches, routing all of their opponents en route to being the highest scoring side in the tournament. The Germans oozed confidence and technique. They deftly coped with Argentinian offensive pressure, Friedrich, Boateng, Mertesacker, and Lahm effortlessly guiding Messi, Tevez, and Higuain into culs-de-sac and into touch. The midfield belonged to the Germans, as Müller and Özil slid forward at the steady behest of Bastian Schweinstieger.
The Argentinians were all at sea, much like the General Belgrano in 1982. They were obviously unaccustomed to being behind in a game, and certainly confused at having to play extended periods in their own end. Tevez started doing what usually indicates the death-knell of a talented team: he started to try and do it all himself. Higuain stopped getting any service up front and found himself an isolated and floundering individual in the inside-left channel.
Nicolás Otamendi had a shocker of a game, and was the target of a lot of ridicule from the passionate Argentinian fans around me. One particularly vocal lad right behind me must have learned his English from a really interesting source, because his imploring screams almost made sense, but not quite.
"Vamos, Tevez! You come f**k on me now! F**k on me here! Vamos! Vamos!" he shrieked, lunging from his seat and bouncing several rows down the aisle every time Tevez or Messi gained the ball before dancing elaborately out of bounds.
Three German goals later, the same lad was tapping me on the back and intoning solemnly that Germany will now win the World Cup. I replied that we Germans love Argentina, because no-one else will shelter our war criminals. He gives me a baffled look that shows that he doesn't quite understand the words, even if he did know who Adolf Eichmann is.
It was a bit odd that I wasn't quite jumping and cheering as Germany ruthlessly went up 2-0 through Klose, and then 3-0 when Friedrich scored, because I was also singing along with the "stand up if you love Deutschland"-type songs and generally having a good time in a mellow sort of way. The fourth goal opened the floodgates. It was deliriously amazing to be carried away by the exuberance of the previously happy, but restrained German fans (like myself) who suddenly lost their inhibitions and recognized that we were a part of history in the making. This would be a result that would rock the foundations of world football.
Must run now, but will try and return, and post more pictures of the black eagle that I hung around with last week in the hopes that his talons will metaphorically grasp the vierte Stern as die Mannschaft's symbol suggests.
Cheerio for now,
—mARKUS
1 comment:
Clearly, your channeling of the predator-spirits into the geist of the Mannschaft was the catalyst for their dominance. Well played, sir!
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