h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I meant to ignore the world championship in Germany, I really did, but I got caught up in that big party, and our team suddenly is a real team and not just eleven highly paid incompetent egomaniacs, as they were for the last years. If Oliver Kahn could be sportsman enough to put aside his hurt feelings and become the embodiment of team spirit, why so could I (in a more general and less strenuous sense)! And at last it is ok to wave the black red gold and even sing the national anthem!

Well yesterday saw a slight check in the frothy feeling of the last weeks.

I could have been honestly glad for the Italians, with a tear in my eye admittedly, but even so, they played a very good game. If only Italian mass media hadn't been the driving force behind the barring of one of the best German players just one day before the game.
That was a low thing to do.
I'm not saying our team would necessarily have prevailed with Torsten Frings playing. But when it comes to the opposing team in the next game for the world championship, one shouldn't be the instigator in such a procedure. If somebody else had been the denouncer, well how opportune.
But as the afair went, a nasty taste remains.
I'm really sorry about that, I really do wish Italy had won without this. After all, one likes to be fair, and it would have been much nicer for us as hosts if this championship had remained all good will and fair play.
That is why I hope Germany will come third, and Italy second.

Well, all I can say is that it was one of the best soccer matches I have ever seen. Ever. It was amazing. We have this idea of the German team being somewhat dull - this game was a revelation: they played with a passion and flair I have rarely seen from any other team. I was really rooting for Germany, and I was somewhat disappointed when they lost, but I also thought that Italy put up tremendous opposition and they are deserving finalists. I doubt if the final will reach the same level of spectacle. France vs Italy is a meeting of two soccer titans so I hope it lives up to the bill.

It was an amzing game and that last minute attack of the Italians was of a simple and compelling beauty in it's ruthlessness and precision.
I loved it.
Ok first I yelped and then I cried and then I had to have a drink. Several drinks in fact.
But now I love the memory of that action.

And that's precisely why I'm so annoyed about that dirty work behind the scenes beforehand to get one of the best German players barred on at best fuzzy evidence. Why did they have to do it? If it hadn't been for that, I would have rooted for them in the final game. Now I can't wish them luck, and I blame them very much for it.

There, I'm still all emotional about it. Here's me, never saw a whole game of soccer before in my life, and now look at me!

It gets under your skin, doesn't it? For what is normally an amazingly boring game, every so often something quite brilliant happens.

I know that England have a very similar issue going on with the Portuguese striker Ronaldo - he tried to get his own Man Utd teammate, Wayne Rooney sent off.. So I guess it happens everywhere.

Why yes it does. Incredible. I really did hold out long against it. When visiting abroad I forbid all friends and acquaintances to make the slightest allusion referring to it in my presence. So they kept saying "that sports event in the near future which we won't mention" just to annoy me.

But then everybody had so much fun and the boys worked like beavers, rather high speed beavers, and I got infected and now I'm seriously contemplatin to get a tiny little flag to wave in front of the tv at tonight's game.

But I don't like dirty work. Maybe it happens everywhere, well I still don't like it. I ours had done a thing like that i'd have been cured of that new patriotic bug in a milli sec. But they dears behaved beautifully so far. Klinsmann applauded only seconds after the catastrophe, and Ballack did the same at the end of the game, as tears were running from his eyes. I thought that was so sweet!

Yeah - they were extremely sporting. I hope they give Portugal a thumping tonight!

I also hope to see France win. I think they are a marvellous team, although how they are going to see themselves through Cannavaro, I just don't know. He's a magician.

Two grat minds thinkin alike! That's my wish, we become third and France wins, that would reconcile me with the whole thing.

Btw i hate the FIFA anyways, they behaved in a very grasping manner before the Mundial started, trying to corner rights on all sorts of things connected or not so connected with the marketing of the great event. Without offering to bear any part of the costs of course, as is the way of such gentry.

It's a big money event, that's for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if there are all kinds of dodgy deals involved.

Well I hear now that the Italien team themselves stressed the point that they had nothing to do with the dirty work, that it had all been nasty journalists. I'm only to eager to believe them implicitely, so I can look forward with an open mind towards the final game tonight.

Mind you, the game for first place between Italy and France will be something of an anticlimax, after what went on last night at the socalled little finals. It was a beautiful game, the Portuguese gave great battle, and I'm glad they scored one goal. Oliver Kahn had been in brilliant form again, but he had no earthly chance to hold that head shot, short of tackling the Portuguese player himself, our defenses having fallen flat on their faces.

After the game was over the jubilation was such that it couldn't have been more had we won the championship. As one commentator remarked, people were celebrating third place in a way as if first place didn't matter at all. I have the distinct feeling that it is all to the better in a way. Whoever wins this championship tonight wins, and power to their football boots!

The only ones who lost where the FIFA jerks, they got a really big BOO from the Stuttgard audience!

That's interesting! I enjoyed the match last night and I let out a big yell each time the German team scored a goal. They never stopped the momentum of the game, and their football was a joy to watch. I'm a convert to German football now..

Ireland will be playing Germany in a few months for the Euro 08 qualifiers. My view on this is that Ireland will be playing one of the best teams in the world, and to beat them they will need to be good - very good indeed. If they can't do it, then they can't ask for sympathy from anyone. This is how soccer should be played in my opinion - with a passion and relentlessness right to the final whistle.

The best was, this team was only partly the one that had played during the championship. Apart from Lehmann making way for Kahn, Ballack was out with leg injury, and so were two or three others, and Klinsmann used the up the whole changing contingent he had to let as many of the bench play as possible, even took out Klose to that effect. But it was by no means a B-team! Yes I'm immensely pleased German football is back at long last!
Ireland plays us first for qualification? Oh oh!

And thanks for yellin at the goals for Germany, we were whooping in unisone then!

Oh well - all over for another 4 years. The big story of the match won't be the Italy win, more Zizou getting sent off.. There was this picture of the back of his head as he passed by the trophy on the way to the dressing room. Unforgettable, and terribly moving. That he deserved to be sent off is not in question - it's the tragedy of it all that gets to you.

Anyway, for what it's worth - against the French team that played tonight, Germany could have done some serious damage. The match of the tournament still remains the Italy-Germany match. It exemplified all that is still good about modern sport.

Lor, what possessed him, I can't think! I mean the Italians can be annoying, haven't I reason to know! But at his age, with his experience, to blow a fuse like that, to be sent off like a naughty schoolboy. And the team had to carry on without him and lost. I felt so sorry for him, yes i also saw that very picture, him passing the trophy. What a way to end his career! And he had everything going for him that day, his name was on everybody's lips.

Oliver Kahn also announced his withdrawal from the national cadre. He had already been sidelined, everybody talked of him being finished. And he kept his temper and took his place on the bench, and worked like a beaver in the team, attended to the players in the breaks and encouraged his rival Lehmann. And then he led the team in against Portugal, and defended his goal like a lion, shouting and directing the players like in the old days. And everybody, Klinsmann, Lehmann, Ballack, was just too happy to surrender that slot to him.

What a different way to say good bye. It gave me a lot to think about.

I guess, when all is said, it's just a little piece of history. In years to come people will still remember Zidane fondly as a great soccer player - the World Cup incident will turn into an anecdote. I wonder if he will have the internal strength to see it that way.

Kahn was superb - a real magician. It's amazing to think that he was being written off before the tournament.

I read a great article about Germany in the Irish Times this weekend - about how the country has really shown it's best side to the world during the tournament, and how visitors have been both amazed and delighted with the reception they were given. In a survey, 90% of tourists said that they would come back again. What a shot in the arm for your country!

It was sone of the best things that happened here for a long time!

Problem is players like Zidane get heckled and impeded and pushed all the time, always two or more sittin on top of him. I understand his nerves got frayed with all the pettiness. For there is a lot of pettiness in football, few real gentlemen, that makes me sad.

The thing with the goal keepers was btw, that Germany has two exceptional keepers, Lehmann and Kahn. The trainer opted for Lehmann, it seems he and Kahn didn't hit it off altogether well. Kahn is an extremely idiosyncratic fellow, to put it tamely. Also he had had some wobblers in his recent past, which offered a perfect pretext to neutralise him. So it started with Ballack taking the captaincy (and a good captain he is) and when the question of the goalkeeper at the world cup came up Kahn got offered second place after Lehmann on the national team. Nobody thought he'd take it, but he did.

I wonder if we'll ever find out why Zidane reacted the way he did. Whatever Matterazi said to provoke him, it must have been pretty serious.

Well it may be an old fashioned sentiment, but in my opinion the Italians ain't no gentlemen. That made me predisposed against them through the whole thing.

I have a friend who lived in Italy for a few years. He has a problem even with the meaning of the word "Italian". He says that because of their history, the cultures within the country are extremely diverse. According to him (and his Italian wife) "Italian" means much less to them than "Irish" would mean to me for instance. They have much stronger local loyalties and many northeners have a very different outlook on life compared to their southern counterparts. Even more incredibly there was a major international study carried out some years ago by the Hofstede institute which put the Northern Italian culture as being extremely similar to the German one!

Just stirring it up!