Since Angela Merkel left (nothing like saying goodbye on time), things in Germany are not the same. As a European locomotive, nothing at all. The growth forecast for this year is a meager 0.2% (who has seen you and who sees you), the war in Ukraine wreaked havoc on inflation, the far right (AfD, Alternative für Deutschland) is already the second party In terms of voting, the elevator for bicycle access to the Rosenthaler Platz subway station can be broken for months without anyone lifting a finger (personal experience), and a train from Hannover can reach the Berlin Hauptbahnhof in three hours of travel time. delay (also personal experience).
Well, to be fair, the thing about German efficiency and punctuality was also a bluff in Merkel’s time… But what Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Social Democrats are undoubtedly to blame for is that Bayern are not going to achieve a twelfth consecutive league title (it is ten points behind Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen), that the German team has not won any important tournament since the 2014 World Cup, that it is not the favorite to win this summer’s Euro Cup despite to be the host…, and instead the NFL is wreaking havoc!
When it comes to how strikes, delays, lack of investment and organizational problems can affect a tournament, one instinctively thinks of the Olympic Games in Athens (if you press me, even Paris) or a Champions League final in Istanbul. . But Germany, and precisely on the occasion of the first Euro Cup since reunification, a song to diversity, inclusion, freedom, tolerance and integration against the populisms in vogue? But the German country is not what it was, the municipal bureaucracy passes the dead to the state, the state to the federal, and between them, the house is left unswept. To get the Aufenthaltserlaubnis (residence permit, the name is already scary) you have to arm yourself with considerable patience and determination. The same as sending a package through the Post Office.
With Julian Nagelsmann in the dock (of the accused), the selection is not exactly that of Beckenbauer, that of Müller or that of Uwe Seeler. And at Bayern, Thomas Tuchel has announced, Xavi and Klopp style, that he is leaving at the end of the season. Soccer is at a low point, but American football is in full swing, with four million fans, 350 clubs and 50,000 players, much more than any other country in Europe. Only the luckiest got tickets to the two NFL games that took place in Frankfurt in the fall. The demand was so great that when you entered the website to buy them at the same time they went on sale, a message appeared that said: “You have 2,115,678 people in front of you in the virtual queue.”
London has been hosting official NFL games since 2007, and Germany has only hosted a couple, but it is the main expansion market. The organization has a permanent office in Düsseldorf, RTL broadcasts 170 games of the season and there are thirteen Patriots clubs spread throughout the country. The Kansas City Chiefs have earned a million dollars in sponsorships and marketing after playing the Miami Dolphins in Frankfurt.
The Germany that is going to host the Euro Cup (and after the summer another NFL game) is a much more fractured, discouraged and angry country than the one that won the 2014 World Cup, dependent on Russian gas, therefore indecisive in the war of Ukraine and whose political instinct is to support Israel despite the notable Muslim population… And Angela can’t be seen…
