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Today, we are all Jögi

Volker Wagener / alJuly 4, 2014

What politics seldom achieves is easily done in football (aka soccer). A game with men dressed in shorts brings the people together. And everyone gets involved. It's a democratic wake-up call, says DW's Volker Wagener.

https://p.dw.com/p/1CVyE
German team trains ahead of the quarter-final against France
Image: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

Why do we all love football so much? It's simple: we can all have an opinion. We are all suddenly Joachim Löw, the national team coach.

World Cups are especially democratic. Voter participation may be declining - but when the world is looking for a new World Cup winner, everyone comes forward to give their opinion, even those that don't understand the offside rule.

Whether we are talking about a "false nine" or doubling up your defensive midfield, whether the team plays 4-4-2-, 4-3-3- or 4-5-1, whether Philipp Lahm should play midfield or right back: on tactics and team selection, we all have an opinion. It's a real phenomenon.

More participatory than politics

So much willing popular participation by the masses is almost unheard of in political circles. After all, who really understands the finer details of Germany's minimum wage debate or 'cold progression' taxation? These are issues that touch the core of our society, but they are not emotional. They stay abstract and are far away from everyday life for most of us.

Football has a very different level of appeal. The ball becomes politics, and our national team becomes the government. Merkel & Co. move into the background. The national team coach is temporarily the chancellor, and we want to tell him how to do it, against France and - hopefully - against the other teams too.

So much democratic involvement is not always so popular with the coaches and the team. How the media criticized the way that Germany won against Algeria became a talking point domestically.

Deutsche Welle Volker Wagener
DW's Volker WagenerImage: DW

The angry interview given by national team player Per Mertesacker has been a big point. Social network sites have noted record participation numbers since then, and some tabloids have even called for sporting referenda: Where should Lahm play? Should Klose start? And has Manuel Neuer reinvented the almost forgotten position of sweeper?

But the main question is: Are we happy to take a dirty win, like in 1982 against France, or do we want to go down playing beautiful football?

Winning using 'Hamburg fruit salad'

Community is a wonderful thing; especially when it's successful. If we manage a win tonight, whether Jogi Löw sticks to his plan or whether he takes the "advice" of millions of national team coaches, everyone will beat their chests and say that they knew what it takes to beat "the Frenchman."

For those that find chess-like football strategies a bit challenging, its worth remembering a simple footballing pearl of knowledge from the 1980s. That was a time when Hamburg still set the standard for football.

Horst Hrubesch, Hamburg's main striker, described his team's tactics as follows: "Felix (Magath) gives the cherry to Manni (Kaltz). Who then puts in the banana cross to me. It hits me on the melon, and it's a goal." Since then, this has been known as the Hamburg fruit salad. Those are the vitamins we need today, starting at 6 p.m.

'Fighting, falling down, getting up, winning!'

It's great to live in an interactive age when everyone wants a win against France. The people working at the bakery around the corner from where I live have put it all on a t-shirt: "Fighting, falling down, getting up, winning!" As I said: politics is difficult, football is simple - in fact.

At the same time, all the football hype gives us all another issue to think about - one that dates back to the World Cup in 2006. That's the issue of patriotism.

Football makes people search for an identity. But the extent to which that happens is something new for us Germans. For people of the 1968 generation, the colors black, red and gold and our national anthem were embarrassing for many years. We looked with jealousy to France, who didn't get patriotic only during the football season.

Those times are now long gone. Even hard-line leftists have now discovered their German patriotism - but still manage to distance themselves from being nationalists. Finally, it's normal to be proud: that feels good.