Das Reboot by Raphael Honigstein

Author:Raphael Honigstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781568585314
Publisher: Nation Books
Published: 2015-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

GRILL SHACK

‘That’s when you realise what a fascinating organism a cactus is.’

Why can’t we be more like the Austrians? It’s not something Germans contemplate that often, if we’re being honest. But Oliver Bierhoff caught himself pondering that very question after the strenuous last sixteen win in Porto Alegre. An Austrian radio reporter had accosted him at the very end of the mixed zone, with a jovial request to say a few words for his listeners. ‘Herr Bierhoff, Herr Bierhoff. Can you please say: “Good morning, Austria”?’

Bierhoff looked at the man with incredulity. He had just spent a good half an hour talking up the 2-1 win in front of the German press corps, explaining why this had been a minor triumph, not a near-disaster. A White House press officer couldn’t have done a slicker PR job but the mood inside the Beira-Rio was still more ‘national crisis’ than ‘hurrah: quarter-finals’. The Austrian journalist was either totally oblivious to all of that or simply didn’t care. Bierhoff was trying to work out the angles, you could see it in his face. Then, ever the pro, he simply did as he was told. ‘Good morning, Austria. This is Oliver Bierhoff. Thanks for rooting for us!’

The reporter stopped recording, thanked him profusely and then helpfully proceeded to put everything – this wretched, lucky, deserved, flattering, frightening, demoralising, encouraging game – into its proper context. ‘I don’t understand what they all want,’ he laughed. ‘We, as Austrians, would just be happy to have made it into the quarter-finals.’ Bierhoff cracked a big smile. ‘You are so right,’ he said. Then he left for the team bus, his mood lighter.

‘It’s a German phenomenon: sometimes the basic joy is missing,’ Bierhoff told the media at Campo Bahia a couple of days later. What he meant was that his pernickety countrymen were, typically, too busy fussing over the flaws of a below-par win to delight in the successful result and enjoy the moment.

‘We’ve achieved a lot. I think that should be recognised more,’ a rather tipsy Per Mertesacker had said after the defeat in the Euro 2008 final in Vienna, post-match bottle of Becks in hand. Jan-Christian Müller, the Frankfurter Rundschau journalist talking to him in the mixed zone, was sympathetic to the young defender’s complaint but informed him matter-of-factly ‘the German doesn’t think that way’. The two men looked at each other for a few seconds. What else was there to say?

A first final appearance in that competition since the Wembley success in 1996 would have been cause for celebration in many countries – and the Nationalmannschaft, upon their return, were indeed received by half a million jubilant fans at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate determined to party through another magical summer.

But the wider echo, in newspapers, pubs and bars wasn’t nearly as positive. Löw’s Germany had gone to Austria/Switzerland as one of the favourites to win the competition but they had been outclassed by Spain in the final and only made it to Vienna courtesy of a pretty chaotic, defensively unsound 3-2 win over Turkey in the semi-final.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.