kobietanawyspie.com and England lose to Germany without penalties

by Parsley on Wed, 2010/06/30 - 11:45pm Post to Twitter

Sports Review : Germany 4, England 1, 27/06/10
It was with some shock that I discovered that I was going to be in Germany during England’s world cup game against Germany. In recent years I’ve become accustomed to unrealistic hopes being placed upon the England team, until they came crashing out of a tournament, usually after losing on penalties. I therefore made the prediction of a dry 0-0 match dragging on into extra time, until finally England would yet again lose on penalties. Alternately England might score an early goal, probably against the ‘run of play’, only for Germany to equalise at the last minute and drag everything on to the same finale: England losing on penalties.

In the event the result was somewhat more exciting although similarly cringe-making. The German team now includes players from Polish, Turkish and African backgrounds. German commentators now felt that this made English press references to the Second World War somewhat ridiculous. I couldn’t help feeling that such references were only a small scale more ridiculous than the whole concept of a competition based on some weird understanding of geographic origin, let alone the bizarre aims of projecting inflated leather balls into a net under time limits against another team trying to do the same. But I digress…

The German papers proclaimed ‘Bye Bye England’ and ‘Time to say Goodbye’ in English, whilst explaining in German that they had great respect for English football, but no fear of it. On the morning of the game we learned that the beers gardens in town (Munich, where I played with The Moving Sounds the night before) were already packed to capacity, some four hours before the game began. The German racial stereotype was entirely confirmed.

Instead we (3 Swedish members of the Moving Sounds, myself and several of our German hosts) attended the so-called English Garden of a central Munich park, some 2 and a half hours before the match. I mused on whether England might have a ‘German Garden’ in any of its parks. We were only able to sit because some of our hosts had been reserving places for us. Of course, refreshments were available in the form of enormous tankards of beer, and the time passed quickly with a constant stream of people asking if we could make space for them to sit down.

As befits a loan Englishman in a crowd of several thousand Germans I elected to wear a Germany scarf and a black shirt (black being a comfortable part of the German flag, and not actually a goth fashion statement). My Swedish friends found great joy in being less than subtle about my origins, and the 60-year-old German who did end up sitting next to me insisted that it was not a problem. Quite possibly it wasn’t, but I imagined the equivalent drunken gathering in London with a lone German and I decided not to take any chances.

Moving Sounds guitarist Staffan had come back to our table with an unfeasibly large plate of ribs, and when he could barely eat half I found myself ravenously finishing them off for him. Possibly I was distracting myself from the situation around me. Possibly I was storing up energy, should I need to make a run for it later. I felt I was eating some kind of ‘last meal’.

The Germans were in high spirits from the off, and it only got better for them as they began to score. I was trying to keep quiet whilst enduring the familiar nausea of any England fan facing a mid-innings collapse in cricket, an early exit from a tennis tournament or the jaded mediocrity of our footballers before their spectacular penalty ineptitude.

I had been taken by Princes William and Harry’s message that if they did their best we would be proud of them whatever the result. I felt that comment was an extremely worthy one i.e. knowing that we are not a great team, but making it in the gift of everyone to succeed even in alleged failure.

Meanwhile on the pitch England had mustered an equalising goal, only to have it disallowed. The Germans enjoyed several replays that showed how it had conclusively been a goal. This was a double tragedy for England: not only had we one less goal than we should have, but we entered the recess that we were in some way a match for the Germans, even though we were in every sense losing to them.

I continued to enjoy the unease of sitting with the rival supporters, as I felt the sickening hatred of other’s self-satisfied success, which for me is available from English people as much as from Germans given the right circumstances.

Manager Fabio Capello had got the English team to adopt a strategy which I can only describe as ‘attack, lose possession, let in goal’, and it was one the fast young German players were very keen to take advantage of. They did so twice, and put us firmly out of our misery without requiring the ritual of penalties.

My Swedish friends had been exclaiming loudly for the Germans with more than a hint of ironic sarcasm. The actual German exclamations were relatively restrained, but after the match there was great noise, drinking and merriment in the packed streets. The disallowed England goal was the ‘icing on the cake’ for them. I returned to our quarters to sleep, nursing an unpleasant headache. At least that’s the last one this tournament.

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Apologies for the blatant self-plug, but if you’ve ever wanted to enjoy my contributions in your native Polish, or you are a Polish woman learning the joys and sorrows of making the island of the UK your home, you will be interested in this new site. Editor Dorota Gorecka has turned away from the eye-blisteringly busy styles of women’s magazines websites and instead given clean clear presentation to a refreshing mix of important information, fun and thoughtful content.

A selection of my writings will appear in Polish on the site. My Sex and the City double bill review is at http://sites.google.com/site/kobietanawyspie/sex-w-wielkim-miescie-2. And if you’re English you can always shove it through google translate so you can still join in.