A question of fate

On Thursday and Friday, I exchanged a few e-mails with an English colleague who was in Moscow to cover the crucial World Cup qualifier between Russia and Germany. We shot the digital breeze to discuss possible tactics, likely line-ups and current form.

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Miroslav Klose will be somersaulting again in no time after being given the swine flu all clear.

I haven't been in touch with him since, but judging from the piece he wrote about the game I have the sneaking suspicion he feels our exchange was rather expendable in that neither tactics nor line-ups nor form are of any importance whatsoever when it comes to Germany and a World Cup qualifying campaign.

"Quite how Germany keep on doing it is mystifying," he wrote on Sunday, meaning how the team keeps on getting results with uncanny regularity. He also said "it feels at times Germany are proceeding by some ancient genetic memory rather than on merit" and concluded "this was simply one of those nights when Germany exercised their age-old hold on the fates".

If you have read any of the columns that have dealt with our national team in the seven years I've been churning out such pieces you will be expecting me to criticise those lines and rebuke my colleague for cliché-mongering.

However, I hesitate.

I'm still not particularly inclined towards attributing what happens in a football match to ancient genetic memory or a hold on the fates, let alone both. But I have to admit that my resolve somewhat weakened on Saturday. No, not when the final whistle blew in Moscow but roughly five hours later.

It was around midnight over here. Some half-hearted channel surfing suddenly took me to a World Cup qualifying game from South America. Which is how I came to watch Argentina enjoy, if that's a fitting term here, what felt like 90% of ball possession against Peru.

Like I said, it was late, so I followed only the first half before going to bed. However, I hung around long enough to hear the commentator mention that Argentina had lost no less than six games in the current World Cup qualifying campaign. I also heard him point out that Peru had barred Argentina's way to a World Cup before, back in August of 1969, when they drew 2-2 in Buenos Aires.

As a German, you listen to such things in utter amazement. How can a team like Argentina lose so many times in a single qualifying campaign when (West) Germany have only ever lost two World Cup qualiyfing matches in history, one of which was meaningless? How can a team like Argentina, however rare this may be, fail to qualify for a World Cup?

And then, slowly, you realise that some ancient genetic memory must be clouding your mind, because quite obviously your thinking has just been complete rubbish.

It's not amazing that teams like Argentina lose games, even Brazil have been beaten twice in the current campaign. And it's not amazing that teams like Argentina sometimes fail to qualify for a big tournament, just ask the English or the French. It's amazing - perhaps even mystifying - that Germany never suffer such setbacks.

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The scoreline that sent Germany through

Of course this view is a slight exaggeration of events. In late 2001, for instance, our age-old hold on the fates must have temporarily loosened when David Beckham scored in injury time against Greece to send England through and Germany to the play-offs. (Just imagine the headlines if it had been the other way round, with Germany scoring late.)

But, by and large, history indeed seems to be in the mood for repeating itself whenever Germany enter a qualifying campaign. Sometimes that even holds true for individual games. Because Saturday's 1-0 win in Moscow and the 2-1 win in Dortmund almost exactly a year ago against the same opponents were strangely similar.

In both games, Russia missed the first golden opportunity of the night (Pavel Pogrebnyak last year, Vladimir Bystrov this year), even though Germany looked very comfortable in the first half and eventually went ahead following a nice move involving Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski.

In both games, Russia created tons of chances after the break but were denied again and again by goalkeeper René Adler, on the pitch only because Robert Enke was sidelined.

But, despite that pressure, in both games Germany were a bit unlucky to not put the match out of Russia's reach roughly on the hour, hitting the crossbar through a midfielder (Piotr Trochowski last year, Mesut Özil this year).

In both games, Russia were then unlucky to not equalise two minutes from time. A year ago, it was Alan Dzagoev who hit the post, now it was referee Massimo Busacca who wouldn't award the hosts a penalty when Arne Friedrich clearly brought down Bystrov.

However, at the end of the day I guess I still refuse to believe that there's a cosmic conspiracy to ensure that no matter what happens, Germany always go through without a scratch.

Guus Hiddink, for one, felt there was a more tangible reason why Germany won. During the press conference he used the German term Durchschlagskraft to explain what made the difference on the night and asked the interpreter to leave that word untranslated.

It is indeed difficult to translate into English. I have found a website that has Hiddink saying "The difference was the penetration of the Germans" (as in "penetrating a defence"), but that sounds awkward and also disregards the final part of the German compound.

Durchschlagskraft is the German equivalent of impact depth and, when used metaphorically, means: cutting through something with vigour and determination. Provided you possess Durchschlagskraft, of course, as you can also lack it.

And so you could also translate Hiddink's statement thus: we wasted our chances and they didn't. This explanation for a defeat may be as unsatisfactory as calling on the fates, but sportsmen generally prefer this way of looking at things because it sounds less like an excuse.

On Sunday, for instance, I was briefly in touch with a player whose team had suffered a severe setback on Saturday through no fault of their own. The match between the two other teams had finished with the worst possible result, which is why I said I was sorry about that scoreline. "Yes, it's a bad result for us," he replied. "But it should never have come to this situation in the first place. We have nobody to blame but ourselves."