All hail the entertainers!
As enjoyable as this World Cup is, there have been surprisingly many mysterious games.
Uli-HesseLichtenberger/Soccernet
Argentine fans glory in their team's glittering victory in Gelsenkirchen over Serbia and Montenegro.
Next up was Croatia versus Japan, with the Asians in desperate need of all three points (unless they considered Brazil pushovers). Yet it was the Croatians who brought on striker upon striker, finishing the 90 minutes with four men upfront, while the Japanese tenaciously hung on to a scoreless draw worth zilch.
And on Wednesday, Holland met Argentina's reserve eleven with first place in the group at stake - which, remember, translated into playing Mexico instead of Portugal in the next round. Yet the one team that tried to play football and win the match wore sky-blue, while Oranje's gameplan amounted to little more than boring the opposition to death and earning a point that may be good for morale but nothing else.
Boy, am I glad that the host team just takes the ball, moves upfield and tries to score goals, no messing about and no shuffling around.
There, I never thought I could write a sentence like that about Germany and get away with it, but times have obviously changed. A 'truly historic revolution' is what César Luis Menotti calls Germany's displays at this World Cup, and I don't want to argue with a man who's been more critical of Germany in the past than I have, which is saying something.
The funny thing is that when Jürgen Klinsmann mentions the coaches he has worked under and learned from during his playing career, men like Giovanni Trapattoni (at Inter) and Arsène Wenger (at Monaco), he rarely forgets to namedrop César Luis Menotti.
This may seem strange, as Klinsmann and Menotti spent less than four months together. The Argentinian coach was in charge of Sampdoria when Klinsmann joined that club in 1997, but he was gone after all of eight league games and a first-round exit from the Uefa Cup, his last match in charge being a 3-0 drubbing at the hands of Lazio. (Then, I can't resist to point out, coached by a certain Sven-Göran Eriksson.) Yet Menotti must have made an impression on Klinsmann.
Just last week, the German-French politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit told a Berlin newspaper: 'Klinsmann has fallen back upon Menotti's left-wing wisdom: football is all about scoring one more goal than the opposition.' That refers to Menotti's fairly famous distinction between left-wing football (marked by creativity, fun and offensive play) and right-wing football (characterised by negativity, fear and only caring about results).
| “ | What I have seen now is a truly historic revolution. ” | |
| — Menotti on Klinsmann |
The Ecuador match was yet another case in point. Final group games between two teams which have already gone through to the next round are usually numbingly tedious because there are a number of unwritten rules coaches apparently have to adhere to: rest your best players or those already booked, conserve energy, play for a nice and easy draw that won't hurt nobody. Ecuador stuck by those rules. Germany did not.
This courageous, cavalier approach is not something Germans are used to from their own team, which explains a good deal of the euphoria currently surrounding the side.
There have been so many tournaments in the past where Germany progressed in a cold, calculating manner while daring, attractive sides fell by the wayside that it is a thoroughly enjoyable experience to be able to tell Ruud Gullit - hey, if name-dropping is good enough for Klinsmann, it's good enough for me! - that the English play like the Germans, the Dutch play like the English and the Germans play like the Dutch.
Gullit challenged the bit about Holland looking like England, but I still maintain the Dutch played more speculative long balls in their first two games than can be legal in the lowlands. Yes, this World Cup has been a huge stop sign for stereotypes so far. That's also corroborated by the man we have been talking about a few paragraphs ago.
'I had heard a bit about the new Klinsmann style, but what I have seen now is a truly historic revolution,' César Luis Menotti said a few days ago. 'It basically doesn't even matter whether this Germany team will make it far or not. The thing that counts is the impression it has left. The old German style, fighting spirit and a strong defence, is forgotten. I take off my hat to Klinsmann for having so much courage, and I welcome this offensive mentality.'
PeterRobinson/Empics
Cesar Luis Menotti: The short-lived mentor to Klinsmann's games.
Even more awe-inspiring than the work of art that was goal number two was their efficiency. Argentina had four clear-cut scoring chances in their first game, against Ivory Coast. That was good enough for two goals and a third one which the linesman missed. In the Serbia match, it wasn't until Hernan Crespo was denied by the goalkeeper roughly five minutes from time that Argentina wasted an opportunity to score.
No wonder Diego got more physical exercise than he must have had in the past ten years taken together, jumping up and down all the time as he was.
If you wonder why the whole column is, in a way, about Argentina you haven't followed the German media coverage. We're playing the gauchos in the quarter-finals, that's why.
Which tells you that yet another proverbial German virtue has gone out of the window, namely doing things step by step. What happened to 'The next opponent is always the hardest'?
Anyone who's seen the second half of Sweden versus England should worry about other things than how to play Argentina.
It took Sweden 225 minutes to finally get into the tournament, but it looks as if they've regained their form just in time. Which is, of course, very German.
Also available: Uli's new book Flutlicht und Schatten for all you German scholars to gen up on the history of the European Cup.
