Life, Death and Football

Maybe it isn’t more important than life and death as the late Bill Shankly once described football.  A good Cup run though  has been known to increase a City or Country’s productivity.   We have some tips for watching the Big games to share with Expats at a time when being from another Country really does make a difference.

Something we Brits and Germans definitely have in common is our love of Football.  Both Country’s fans  have shared interests – none being shared more than bitching over those infamous Vuvuzelas (or ‘Uwe Seelers’ as older football fans know them).  Okay, they are popular at African games.  How many African games have a crowd of 50.000 though?  Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg  has a capacity of 88.000.  Imagine 88.000 of those irritating trumpets in one place.  You won’t need a television to broadcast the sound – just open your windows.

We both enjoy hotly discussing the good goals and bad haircuts, the high jinx and the low fouls.  We enjoy having ‘experts’ discuss these points for us on TV.  Which is odd, because either they say what we ourselves thought in which case we already knew it – or they say the opposite – in which case we shout disparagingly at them as if they were referees missing an obvious handball in the penalty box.    something of a no win situation if you ask me.

Despite my misgivings about their actual existence as TV pundits I will however miss Gerhard Delling and Günther Netzer sparring it out with a humour that is drier than the Sahara at mid-day.   I know it’s all very calculated -  With typical German reserve they never call each other Gerhard or Günther onscreen despite being close friends for years – but they are rip roaringly funny compared to the other pundits on offer.  Maybe, this being their swansong competition, future matches will have a panel of experts as England has for years now sitting round a table.  At the moment it’s like German Supermarkets – as every company makes the same flavoured pizzas and crisps so every German channel has a one on one football panel.  Which leads me to hope that Netzer and Delling will round off their career as German footballs answer to Laurel & Hardy by announcing they are ‘going du’ and hurling custard pies into each others smiling faces as a goodbye gesture after the Final.   Remember you heard it first on English-network.

I can’t deny that there is a cameraderie about watching your Country on TV though, and hearing a roar from the neighbours TV set as a goal goes in.  My only complaint is that our neighbours are on satellite and seem to get the goals about five seconds before we do.

Better is to be with so many people making so much noise that you can’t even hear the commentary on the screen in front of you, never mind the neighbours Pay TV.

Here are my tips for being part of the crowd without booking a flight to Africa:

The Fiddlers, Endenich

Museumsplatz

And where to be for non-football fans:

World Cup Free Zone

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