In the third game of the 2018 World Cup, holders Germany must beat South Korea to advance to the knockout stages of the tournament in Russia. But Joachim Löw’s team lost. The new start after the debacle fails, football falls into disrepute and nothing else turns out well.
June 27, 2018 was a sunny day. On the fan mile in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the spectators whiled away the time until the kick-off of the third World Cup game of the German team. The fans shot at the goal flown in by an agency from Rio from the 2014 final. Feeling like Mario Götze for once. Score once for eternity. Long line not far from the Soviet War Memorial on 17th June Street. Everyone wants to meet. Everyone wants to be Mario Götze one day.
Sure, the World Cup hero of 2014 hadn’t even made it into the squad for Russia four years later and “The Team” hadn’t found the right track at all. The opening defeat by Mexico and the last-second win against Sweden stumbled by a Kroos free-kick were an inadequate response to the massive pre-tournament unrest.
?lkay Gündo?an and Mesut Özil had set the tone for the unsuccessful start with their picture together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but hopes for Sweden were high. Also because national coach Joachim Löw was leaning so deeply relaxed against a lantern in Sochi and the tournament had only just begun. In the years following the World Cup triumph in Rio, the national team had grown increasingly alienated from the grassroots and was suddenly larger than the country it represented. The marketing term “The Team” was the culmination of this alienation, which was associated with outrageous hashtags like
But a win against South Korea and it would all be sort of forgotten. As is well known, the knockout phase always begins a whole new tournament. Before that just 90 minutes South Korea. What could possibly go wrong? All! Looking back at the words of colleague Tobias Nordmann, who analyzed the collapse at the time.
“The first 45 minutes were as fiery as Benjamin Blümchen at the Lambada, the second half crunched like Ötzi’s joints. ZDF man Béla Réthy found himself in need several times to explain to the bored TV viewers that the The scenes shown are real-time images,” he wrote and found no end: “The German efforts were sluggish, sluggish and unimaginative like international matches at the end of the 90s. Pass monster Toni Kroos forwarded 114 passes to his colleagues – according to his way of counting with it 286 fewer than against Sweden – but there was just as little of a clever idea as there was a fatal mistake. And the fact that the statistics experts at Fifa Germany put 26 shots on goal in their diligence booklet is probably called a world champion bonus.”
The world was fascinated by the downfall of the German team, who had even created a good chance just before the two late goals. But Mats Hummels hit a cross from Özil with his shoulder and not his head. A goal would have been achieved. Like: sinking or hashtag
For the last remaining fans of Bierhoff’s art product “The Team”, the agonizingly slow end was a “Where were you?” moment. Nobody will forget where he followed the worst bankruptcy in German tournament history, but nobody could have guessed at the time what a wild ride would follow. Not just for football, but for the world. The shocks in German football were massive, the upheavals in society are still there and will remain so. For a long time.
Probably never since the Second World War has the world changed so massively in a critical direction between two tournaments. “The social upheavals of the past four years have had a completely different quality,” says Matthias Gehrhus. His family has been running the Bornholmer Hütte in Prenzlauer Berg since 1954, just a few hundred meters from the historic site of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. “Everywhere is seething. A lot happened in the four years between 1986 and 1990, but the world ultimately changed for the better Direction. That changed. At that time it was about freedom.” Gehrhus refers to the pressing issues of the day: the war in Ukraine, the pandemic lurking in the background, inflation. The bartender is worried. He’s not alone in that.
Four years after South Korea, war is back in Europe. Starting from the host of the 2018 World Cup, which has been internationally isolated since February 24, 2022. In addition, a pandemic that is far from over and that has been weighing on society for over two years. A correct answer to how to deal with it has not yet been found, nor to the increasingly urgent questions of climate change, which is no longer a future. Inflation, rising energy costs, fears of global famine, general uncertainty about what will happen. Nervous twitching everywhere. More than two years of state of alert since the outbreak of the pandemic have left their mark.
The years in fast forward, the shocks in German football seem like a joke, but of course they are real. Joachim Löw is no longer national coach, he got another tournament. That was just as weak. After the logical end to England, the leaden Löw years were history. The eternal national coach had previously made a few rescue attempts.
The mudslinging over Mesut Özil was followed by the brief end of the Germany careers of Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels and Jérôme Boateng after unconvincing performances in the Nations League, one of these new competitions. But the pandemic and the postponed EM brought at least Hummels and Müller back. The DFB, with its constantly changing presidents, also had to contend with falling audience numbers and excessive expectations during the pandemic. Attempts to approach the base again were torpedoed and seemed helpless beforehand. Ticket prices remained high and interest low. Too much football for too many changes in life.
Not only Löw left after the EM, but also Kroos, a misunderstood genius of German football. The midfielder still makes headlines, just not in national team kit. New optimism moved in with Hansi Flick. Still undefeated, the big tasks lie ahead of him. The controversial winter World Cup does not start until November. Maybe even with Mario Götze again. He is now 30 and is back in the Bundesliga after two years in exile in the Netherlands and is still hoping for a place in the squad in Qatar.
On the morning of June 28, 2018, not only Joachim Löw is worried about his future. The dealers on the fan mile at the Brandenburg Gate are also worried. The big business should start from the round of 16. But only a few spectators have gotten lost in the Tiergarten in recent weeks. The World Cup is one to forget. There will no longer be a fan mile at the 2020 European Championship, which will be held in 2021. The pandemic requires distance. Then, when the world tournament in Qatar begins in November, those who still want to watch football will avoid the cold. If that’s even possible.
