Munich, Germany – The carved Virgin Mary that has been perched high atop Marienplatz since 1638 doesn’t often get a chance to see Munich’s main plaza like it has this week.
Poles and Costa Ricans linking arms and singing a song – stone sober. A Brazilian youth soccer team trying to find the nearby McDonald’s. German boys wearing black, red and yellow balloon hats. Mexicans decked out in the tricolor drinking German beer in outdoor cafes, staring out at the blackened facade of the gargoyle-covered Neues Rathaus town hall.
Major tourist attractions for nearly four centuries, Marienplatz, Munich and the rest of Germany are bracing for the kind of event that encompasses what many consider their three biggest industries: tourism, beer and soccer.
The 18th World Cup kicks off at 10 a.m. MDT today when Germany hosts Costa Rica in Munich’s year-old FIFA World Cup Stadium, oddly looking like a gleaming, white radial tire on its side.
If tourism is Germany’s meal ticket and beer is its fuel, soccer is its soul.
For the world’s most popular sporting event to return here signals a renewed celebration of soccer’s fanaticism at its patriotic core.
In 2002 in South Korea and Japan, soccer was a novelty. In 1998 in France, soccer was big but most fans would have preferred sitting in cafes. In 1994 in the United States, soccer was a corporate enterprise.
In 2006 in Germany, however, soccer is the lifeblood of a people who for the past 60 years have been hated and envied, prosperous and unemployed. Soccer is the one link that has tied a people through defeat in World War II, post-Nazi self-loathing, economic recovery and historic reunification.
Now, as Germany goes through one of its most serious economic and social crises in half a century, the nation looks to its soccer team and this tournament as reason to forget for four weeks. And, if Germany happens to win, it’s reason to remember for four years.
“There is so much news of Nazis or problems with skinheads,” said Marc Boese, a waiter in Hamburg. “We just want to show we’re friends of the world. That’s more important than football. It’s a party.”
Going in style
The nation is pulling out all the old German efficiency. All 12 host cities have built stadiums since 2000. There’s plenty of new German style, too. Hamburg is featuring 300 blue soccer goalposts illuminated onto buildings, which lasers will shoot through to simulate goals.
Munich has built a giant screen by an Olympic Park lake to accommodate 20,000 fans who can’t get tickets. Organizers have been touring all 12 cities with a giant soccer globe, featuring a soccer museum on the first floor and goalposts for kids to try penalty kicks on the second.
“Every aspect of life, soccer and the World Cup has played a role,” said Steve Cherundolo, a U.S. defender who plays for Hannover 96 in Germany’s prestigious Bundesliga.
“Every company has taken advantage of the World Cup being here in advertising. It’s been the dominating thing in the media. It’s the topic in schools. Kids are emulating players. It’s a topic all over the street, bars and cafes. There really is nothing else to talk about except the World Cup.
“And that’s what makes this so special.”
U.S. goalkeeper Kasey Keller plays for Borussia Mönchengladbach outside Düsseldorf and also played in London and Barcelona. Fans hold up signs reading “Crazy Keller” when he plays.
“The stadium atmosphere is the best of anywhere I’ve been,” Keller said.
Mönchengladbach’s VIP area stretches the length of one grandstand. Tickets are 200 euros (about $260); demand is so high the club built a tent outside the stadium that fits 500 people. So imagine Munich today.
“I think when the games go on, especially when Germany plays – and the U.S., I hope – the country will be a little bit at a standstill,” Cherundolo said.
Road to recovery
There’s a lot at stake – and not just a small, gold trophy. Germans merely ask for economic and social recovery, much as they did following World War II.
In 1954, the war had been over nine years. West Germany was a mess: divided and poor, unhappy and scorned.
Then the national team went to Switzerland and won its first World Cup.
“Some people say that was the beginning of the nation,” said Ludger Schulze, sports editor for Suddeutsche Zeitung, Munich’s largest paper. “Germany was divided … people were depressed. They didn’t have the feeling that this country could grow. Winning the World Cup in ’54 was like a symbol for Germany. The symbol said: This nation can improve and can build something. They can build a nation.”
Which they did. Confidence reached an apex in 1974 when the World Cup came to Munich and the West Germans beat Holland in front of their fans.
In 1990, Germany was no longer divided, and the new nation celebrated unification from the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall by beating Argentina in Italy. The patriotic celebration turned into a hangover as complications of unification took hold. Immigrants poured in, former East German cities struggled with new democracy and the economy went south.
Unemployment stands at 10 percent; crime and racism are rising.
That’s a lot to lay on a 30-year-old from the former East Germany. Michael Ballack is the star of this German team, a team that has done nothing to make people believe in a repeat of 1974.
Since losing to Brazil in the 2002 final, Germany didn’t win a game in EURO 2004 and was embarrassed in Italy, 4-1 in March.
The great players, such as goalie Oliver Kahn, 36, are too old.
The good players, such as forward Lukas Podolski, 21, are too young. There’s a lack of speed. Goaltender Jens Lehmann, who beat out Kahn, will start his first World Cup.
Ask 100 people around Germany and you’ll get 100 reasons why Germany won’t do well.
“Our defense is nil. Nothing,” said Mohn Singh, a Hamburg cab driver.
Germany is in cream-puff Group A, which might help it get to the quarterfinals.
But the quarterfinals are three weeks away. The world’s biggest sports party begins here tonight. Don’t look now but the Virgin Mary just donned a black, red and yellow balloon hat.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
