A LOCAL DERBY, A LOCAL squabble some centuries old and the World Cup was bubbling over last night in a froth of patriotic fervour. In a stadium with almost as many Polish supporters as German, and frequently all mixed in together (as they have been here in the Ruhr for years in real life) it was a night of footballing passion that got right to the quick of things.
International football is about football, but it is also about nations, and when two nations have a long and shared history, a football match is hardly going to make anyone forget the years of slights and troubles and wrongs, particularly when no one going to the match — at least on the Poland side — had any intention of doing so.
One of the reasons the Germans wanted to have the World Cup here (apart from the money) is to show to the world how nice the Germans are, how splendid and 21st century they are. Nothing funny about them. But this fixture, fraught with a ton-weight of history, is not exactly what the German politicos wanted. Still, perhaps it is just what the German people wanted; certainly those here last night faced the prospect with real relish. So, for that matter, did their team.
It was a match in which no one spared the mustard.
The Poles sang and bayed for everything, so did the Germans, in an uninhibited display of patriotism. It seems that the Germans have decided that, after a long pause for that reason best not mentioned, it is OK for a German to be patriotic again. There need be no embarrassment about shouting Deutschland at a football match and waving a German flag. We can take it. Honest. It won’t go to our heads.
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Well, why not? The people that perpetrated the great crimes are dead or in their dotage; what they did has become something learnt from books: something acknowledged, accepted, unforgotten. But modern Germany, prosperous, democratic, and above all, unified, has as much right as any former world power to celebrate its existence, and to cheer for its boys at a football match. And so they did last night, as Michael Ballack conducted the occasion like Sir Malcolm Sargent at the Last Night of the Proms, filling the air with the kind of pass known as “a Hollywood ball” for its stylish inefficacy, but also providing stuff that was direct and to the purpose for thrillingly unGermanic style of his attackers.
Perhaps the point is that Germany has discovered the difference between patriotism and nationalism. A nationalist thinks his country is by definition better than all others, has rights over all others, and that something has gone badly wrong if his country doesn’t win the World Cup. Some of those who support a certain island nation can be identified here. A patriot, however, is content to enjoy his relationship with his own country and to hope that the World Cup will be a damn good ride.
A patriot from a former great power can be expected to do all this with a little irony. But irony is always a problem for an underdog nation: and Poland have explored the multitudinous forms of underdoggery throughout their history. It adds pain to an already painful situation, then, when the two best forwards on view last night were born in Poland. But alas, poor Poland, Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski moved to Germany as children. They speak Polish to each other on the pitch, but that’s scant consolation.
Football is notoriously prone to the spectacle of teams playing above themselves, as visiting teams always did at Wembley. Last night’s Poland team were splendidly unlike the leaden-footed, nervous bunch who lost 2-0 to Ecuador in their opening match. The first occasion had made them less than themselves, last night had the reverse effect.
Spoiling the German party: these players were enjoying themselves more and more as the match wore on and their defence held firm. Down to ten men for the last quarter of an hour, it became a battle between Polish desperation and German angst, with Artur Boruc, of Poland, pulling off a save worthy of the immortal Jan Tomaszewski. But right at the end, in the kind of drama that only football dares to put on, Oliver Neuville got the goal that sent Germany into rejoicing. Of a patriotic, rather than a nationalistic kind.
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Fans clash
At least 120 German hooligans were arrested last night after clashing with police before the match between Germany and Poland. Police said that the trouble began when officers spotted a crowd of men known to be hardcore hooligans in central Dortmund. Bottles and chairs were thrown and fireworks let off after police tried to prevent the hooligans reaching a big-screen that was showing the match.