How could this shot by Asano (right) go into the German goal?
Image: EPA
The gloating over big versus small defeats has always been part of football, especially at a World Cup. The only thing that is unusual is that the big ones, to whom the Schadenfreude is directed, are now more and more often ourselves.
AThe Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano described himself as a “beggar for good football”. “That’s how I go through the world, hat in hand, and in the stadiums I ask: Just one nice move, God reward you.” Anyone who loves football, the joy of playing, the joie de vivre that he can give, understands Galeano. And for any football beggar, the World Cup has always been a particularly lucrative time.
Does that still apply? At a World Cup that doesn’t take place in summer, but in the gray early winter? Whose flashy arenas, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, aren’t even full at kick-off? Whose organizers forbid their actors textiles that stand for freedom and human rights? “You’re always being told that you can’t look forward to it,” Joshua Kimmich complained before the first German game. “I’d like to be able to look forward to the World Cup.”
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