{"id":73319,"date":"2024-06-14T22:34:09","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T22:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/14\/another-summer-to-remember-for-germany-so-far-so-great\/"},"modified":"2024-06-14T22:34:09","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T22:34:09","slug":"another-summer-to-remember-for-germany-so-far-so-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/14\/another-summer-to-remember-for-germany-so-far-so-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Summer to Remember? For Germany: So Far, So Great."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/14\/multimedia\/14rory-fan-lcht\/14rory-fan-lcht-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Another Summer to Remember? For Germany: So Far, So Great.\" title=\"Another Summer to Remember? For Germany: So Far, So Great.\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The arc of Philipp Lahm\u2019s career had the rhythm of someone meticulously ticking items off a bucket list. He won eight German championships with Bayern Munich, the team he supported as a child. He served as its captain for six years. He led the club to a domestic and European treble. A year later, he captained Germany to World Cup glory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Now, a few years into retirement, Lahm has become a respected figurehead for German soccer as a whole: smart, thoughtful, discrete by inclination but frank when required. He has occupied a handful of honorary, ambassadorial posts, but in 2020 was given a real job, as tournament director of Euro 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Yet for everything else he has achieved, Lahm will always be remembered in his homeland as the man who ushered in the Sommerm\u00e4rchen, the fairy-tale summer, of 2006. All that year\u2019s World Cup became, all that it meant to Germany then and all it means to Germany now, started with his goal in the opening game, here in Munich, against Costa Rica.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Germany did not win that tournament, of course. The host\u2019s run ended, in a technical sense, in heartbreak. If anything, though, that heightened the meaning with which it has subsequently been imbued. For Germany, the 2006 World Cup has always been less about the outcome than \u2014 in a surprisingly literal sense \u2014 the friends it made along the way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After just a single game of this year\u2019s tournament, it is much too early to declare that the scorer of the host\u2019s opening goal in Euro 2024, the elfin Bayer Leverkusen playmaker Florian Wirtz, is destined to follow in Lahm\u2019s path.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Perhaps this dominant 5-1 win against a committed but very obviously overmatched Scotland will prove a false dawn. Perhaps one of Wirtz\u2019s teammates will come to dominate the tournament, or at least Germany\u2019s portion of it, in such a way that he becomes the central figure in the narrative. (Jamal Musiala, if you want a name). Perhaps Germany will go onto win the whole thing, the details lost in the tableau.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Tournaments, like butterflies, all have their own distinct colors and patterns, but they only start to become clear once they have emerged from their chrysalis. (Please note: this may not be true of butterflies, but just go along with it for the purposes of the metaphor.) Nor do they stay the same. Over time, they can gleam or mottle or fade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That has certainly been the case with 2006. Its shadow has hung heavy over this tournament, a memory so perfect that the present did not seem able to compete. Germany recalls, keenly, how happy it was then, and how unhappy it seems now, with a war not far from its borders and an economy stagnating and the far right on the rise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But this is a trick of the light. The country was fretful in 2006, too, unsure how the tournament would go, uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating itself in public. That only changed with Lahm\u2019s intervention. It was only then that Germany began to discern the colors of that bright and vivid summer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The hope, then, must be that \u2014 regardless of where Germany\u2019s story ends \u2014 Wirtz\u2019s goal will have the same effect, 18 years later. This tournament will not solve any of the problems roiling both Germany and Europe. No matter how bombastic UEFA\u2019s mission statements and slogans, that is a job far too large for sports. It is not a panacea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That does not mean it cannot provide a welcome palliative over the next month. Wirtz\u2019s goal, supplemented by the four that followed, served to soothe Germany\u2019s sporting nerves \u2014 the haunting sense that humiliation on the field might lie in wait \u2014 and that, for now, may be enough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For all the worries, for all the angst, Germany has a glimmer of hope, a promise that something encouraging and blissful and \u2014 in the best possible way \u2014 wondrously trivial might be stirring. That may be all that it takes to help the country embrace the tournament: a sense that this might actually be a few weeks to remember.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<hr class=\"css-7ad88g e1mu4ftr0\"\/>\n<h2 class=\"css-13o6u42 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-21ee83ba\">Euro Fever: Patient Observations<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A few thoughts as we begin:<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><strong class=\"css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10\">PREPARE FOR FUN<\/strong> This is, I think, the first men\u2019s tournament in almost a decade which does not represent a major logistical operation for fans of (most of) the competing nations. The last two World Cups, in Russia and Qatar, were financially draining, practically challenging and morally complex. The previous European Championship, held across the continent, was strangled by travel restrictions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Not since France, and Euro 2016, has being present at a tournament \u2014 not necessarily even attending games \u2014 seemed so simple. Germany is, as the tagline goes, in the heart of Europe. The Netherlands and Poland will both pulls vast caravans of fans in their wake, but special mention to the Scots, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Thursday morning, I flew out of Manchester Airport (which is not, you will be aware, in Scotland). My flight, like the airport, was full of Scottish fans, the majority of them in full tartan regalia. This was especially striking, because my flight was headed to Rome. That was not the only detachment of the Tartan Army to take a circuitous route: By Friday, estimates ran that there were about 200,000 Scots in Munich. To put it another way, that is four percent of the country\u2019s population.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><strong class=\"css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10\">HOUSE OF ORANJE<\/strong> Just before I left, my son and I ran into a neighbor who asked which team in the European Championship had the broader support of the Smith household. He was anticipating England, of course, or maybe Scotland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Instead, my son proudly declared that for the next month he will be Dutch. I had to explain: My son is British, of course, but at age 6, a nation is still a fuzzy, indistinct concept. He is, presumably, loyal to it on some level, but he does not feel it as immediately, as keenly, as he does his loyalty to the greater glory of Virgil van Dijk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><strong class=\"css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10\">COMING HOME?<\/strong> Gareth Southgate\u2019s approach to the job of England manager is probably best summed up by the way it might end. Regardless of how his (surprisingly) bold squad fares in Germany, there is a rumbling sentiment this might be his last tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That decision, though, will not have to be made in haste. Southgate\u2019s contract expires in December, an unusual time frame for an international coach (generally they work from major tournament to major tournament.) This is extremely Southgate: It provides both him and England\u2019s soccer authorities the chance to review and reflect on the right course of action once the euphoria\/regret has ebbed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Likewise, the fact that his employers have a succession plan in place is to be commended. Less praiseworthy is the suggestion that it would be more than happy to appoint a non-English manager to replace him. It is one of my few abiding beliefs that major soccer nations should not have foreign coaches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That sounds bad, I realize, but rest assured it is not rooted in some Neolithic conservatism. International soccer is meant to test the strength of a country\u2019s sporting culture. If major nations cannot produce good managers, then that is a flaw they should have to address organically, rather than drafting in an import from a country that can. (Yes, Belgium and Portugal, I am looking at you.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><strong class=\"css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10\">U.S. 1, BRAZIL 1<\/strong> If the buildup to the European Championship has felt relatively low-key, until the very last moment, then it is safe to say that the looming Copa Am\u00e9rica does not really feature in the European imagination just yet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But that does not mean the United States\u2019 creditable draw with Brazil passed by unnoticed: If it felt like a sign that perhaps the Sele\u00e7ao is still something of a work in progress, then it should offer Greg Berhalter \u2014 and his team and his country \u2014 considerable encouragement going into the tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His reign, thus far, feels as if it lacks a signature result: a proof of concept, a sign of what might be to come. Drawing with Brazil, even a slightly anemic one, even in a tuneup game, does not quite meet the bar. It hints, though, that the Copa Am\u00e9rica might be the stage on which the U.S. can find one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/14\/world\/europe\/germany-scotland-euro-2024.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The arc of Philipp Lahm\u2019s career had the rhythm of someone meticulously ticking items off a bucket list. He won eight German championships with Bayern Munich, the team he supported as a child. He served as its captain for six years. He led the club to a domestic and European treble. A year later, he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/14\/multimedia\/14rory-fan-lcht\/14rory-fan-lcht-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4791,1168,20781,8971],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73321,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73319\/revisions\/73321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}