Oh, the Symbolism of Germany's World Cup Exit
It was a nation of champions in 2014. It is a nation of self-doubters today.
It’s bad, but it won’t last.
Photographer: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images Europe
The German national team’s disgraceful exit from the World Cup on Wednesday may be just a soccer defeat, but it feels like more than that: the expression of an anxious, luckless moment of hesitation and uncertainty for Germany.
I moved to Berlin in 2014, during the previous World Cup, in which a joyfully confident German squad didn’t just squeeze its opponents like a ruthless machine, in the style of its predecessors, but wove lace around them with smart passing and stunning speed. The 7-1 victory over Brazil had a dreamlike quality but was somehow expected from a team that combined the cunning and imagination of players of Middle Eastern origin, Mesut Oezil and Sami Khedira, the easy, cool athleticism of Jerome Boateng, son of a Ghanaian father, the chivalry and daring of Polish-born Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski with the bulldog tenacity and engineer-like precision of Bavarian Catholic Bastian Schweinsteiger.