Eight years ago the England football team were suddenly being talked of as world-beaters and prospective 2002 World Cup winners, following their 5-1 qualifying victory over Germany in Munich. The intervening years have shown such optimism to be yet another of the endless false dawns the footballing nation has had to endure since 1966. Those years have also proven that Sven Goran Erickson is more ’show me the money’ than soccer Svengali. But for ten glorious days England supporters everywhere could bask in the sheer unadulterated joy of spanking Germany in their own backyard. Then, on the 11th September, some crazies decided to hijack planes and fly them at various significant American landmarks. Nobody wanted to talk about football any more as the world’s major powers went into a frenzy of security alerts and proposed military retaliations.
I remember the 5-1 victory, then, with mixed emotions. After such a terrible event as the World Trade Centre attacks, it seems crass and inconsiderate to dwell on sporting achievements. Yet isn’t sport in some way a signifier that human endeavour can also be channeled into non-aggressive activities such as football, athletics, cricket, cycling, etc? Nation competes against nation and while patriotic pride might take a beating at times, nobody dies. So forgive me if today I indulge in my personal memories of the day England beat Germany over the course of ninety minutes of kicking a piece of plastic around a grassy pitch, rather than dwelling on the tragedy of 9/11.
I am sure there are quite a few million England supporters who know where they watched the Munich match. A few lucky thousand were privileged to be at the game; the rest of us had to rely on television. I was sat at a friend’s house glued to a rather small screen and when German forward and well known piece of cockney-rhyming slang Carston Jancker tapped the ball past David Seaman to give Germany an early lead, my friend was bouncing around in delight. My friend’s name, you see, is Claus.
Ordinarily Claus and I were disinterested in playing the sort of Nationalistic mind games the English and the Germans seem to reserve especially for one another. We were just two blokes who happened to have been born in different countries but who were rather alike in many ways. As the match had approached that week, however, we seemed to revert to (stereo)type and began digging at one another. On the morning of the 1st September we’d taken a drive to Sidmouth to grab some end-of-summer air on the sea-front. The more Claus reminded me of all the times Germany have dumped England out of World Cups or European Championships, the more he, quite accurately, mentioned that the excellence of the German car industry was one of the reasons shambolic British car manufacturers went to the wall, the more I felt a need to retaliate in kind. Sadly, the best I could do was to observe the mostly empty deckchairs lining the front and remark that I was surprised he’d not been down at three in the morning shoving towels over them so we’d be sure of a decent spot by the afternoon.
SO when Jankcer’s six minute goal went in I feared I was in for an evening of further reminders of Germany’s brilliance and England’s mediocrity. Cue Michael Owen, largely unbroken at the time and therefore still able to get into the England team, 1-1 with twelve minutes gone. The rest of the half was a tense affair, both teams having opportunities, and Claus and I grudgingly acknowledged it could go either way. Then just before half-time Steven Gerrard slammed one of his trademark 25 yard shots into the back of the net. 2-1 England.
History should dictate that a Sven Goran Erickson team which is performing well and leading come the start of the second half will conspire to throw the advantage away and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Not so on that day. Owen scored again three minutes from the restart. Claus groaned for the first time that evening. His team desperately tried to claw their way back into the match, however, and it was not until Owen completed his hat-trick in the 66th minute that Claus’s groans became louder and more resigned. ON 74 minutes Heskey made it 5-1 and Claus’s head dropped into his hands, where it pretty much stayed for the rest of the game. The whiskey bottle he’d been sipping at during the first half was rapidly drained over the final twenty minutes and it was a rather drunk, rather abject German who shook my hand on the final whistle. “Congratulations,” he said, proving that he is more gracious in defeat that most Englishmen I’ve ever met.
The last laugh is generally at the expense of England, regardless of one-off scores like the result that evening. At the following summer’s World Cup finals Germany reached the final, where they lost to Brazil, who had already dispatched England in the Quarter-finals. Our dreams are made of hope and of a willingness to believe that every dog can indeed have its day. German footballing hopes are based on the solid foundation of three World Cup wins and three European Championship titles, plus several other appearances in the finals of both competitions. Depressing when you think about it, isn’t it? Where that whiskey bottle gone?
2 Comments
September 2, 2009 at 22:51
There’s a line in the film Cocktail that goes along the lines of, ” There are two types of people in this world: workers and hustlers. A hustler never works and a worker never hustles.
The English footbal team, I feel, has often suffered because they seem to have too many hustlers and not enough workers. The same might be said of British Leyland but, then again, that didn’t stop them from producing the odd classic here and there, for example Land Rover and the Mini (so good even the Germans wanted it in their portfolio).
So maybe you’ll be right and the arrogant, over-paid, overrated, lazy prima donnas will indeed have their day again.
September 3, 2009 at 11:19
I’m trying to work out now which England footballer can be compared to the mini (probably Michael Owen because he’s certainly small and can squeeze into tight spaces but breaks down a lot.
Bobby Charlton was a Land Rover – not the most aesthetic to look at but kept on performing in all weathers.