Bulletin from Abroad

German fans put All Blacks supporters to shame at the Fifa World Cup.

Cathrin Schaer in Berlin

Every four years, Germans like to put their large, expensive TVs on the street. No, it’s not some odd form of recycling; it’s about the all-consuming quadrennial sporting ritual known as the Fifa World Cup. Imagine the All Blacks playing Australia three times a week for just over a month. That’s how excited people in Germany get about the World Cup.

On any Berlin block this summer, you will find at least three or four venues to watch a football game: a bar with a big projection screen, a cafe with a small one, or offlicences that have set up someone’s gigantic flat-screen on the footpath and arranged chairs around it.

And the locals take it seriously. Very seriously. The national team’s manager has boasted that “die Mannschaft”, which means “the team” (because there’s obviously only one, the German one) is “the nation’s fourth power” – that is, they answer only to the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.

The football team’s fortunes are often used as a metaphor for the state of the nation. After they lost a few weeks ago, psychologists assured the country that the tricky political situation – Chancellor Angela Merkel was fighting with her interior minister and the scrap threatened to bring down the government – was weighing heavily on the players. It was even pointed out that the last time Germany didn’t make it past the cup’s first round, we got World War II.

This year, there was a new scandal. In the past, die Mannschaft has been feted as an athletic version of the “new Germany”, because they represent a virtual league of immigrant nations. This year, two players of Turkish descent posed for a picture with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They presented him with signed shirts and one autograph even said: “To my president, with my respects.”

There was no evidence that Merkel was jealous, but German fans were certainly outraged. Rightwing politicians said the offending players should be kicked off the team. Less hysterical pundits suggested the players shouldn’t really be “supporting the election campaign of a despot”, who has jailed about 50,000 of his opponents.

You may be wondering whether that’s fair or not. You may also be asking that perennial question: do sport and politics mix? It’s an ongoing debate – but over here, especially when it comes to football, they apparently do.

Yet, somehow, they also don’t. Take the German flag, for example. Nationalism remains a controversial topic because of the country’s history. The German flag is tainted by it and you don’t see it around a great deal; people are cautious with those symbols – except during a World Cup.

“This is the only time people can run around with a German flag and nobody cares,” a colleague told me. “Politics don’t matter during a game.”

But in a country where every aspect of culture is political and arguing is a hobby, there’s more than one way to define politics.

I’ll always remember my first

World Cup experience in Berlin, in 2010. New Zealand had made it to the finals in South Africa, and I remember how we all gasped, cheered and groaned in unison, sitting in front of one of those giant TVs hauled onto the street.

I recall thinking, despite the fractured nature of life in a big city, that I was part of a community. Strangers, who usually glared at you just for being alive, were smiling. Some of them waved German flags. Some may have been immigrants. We were all connected – in this case, by 11 blokes with a ball. And there was no point in pretending otherwise.

“This is the only time people can run around with a German flag and nobody cares.”