After the recent pointed remarks against our northern neighbour I have to defend Germany’s soccer team today – a small miracle isn’t it?

I won’t talk much about their performance as such, but just to have it said: They were as strong as Argentina and I can’t say they deserved victory any less. From previous matches I still think Argentina has more potential – but they couldn’t use it. In fact I’m afraid I have to admit that Germany performed really well and objectively it wouldn’t be undeserved if they won. On the other hand I’ve seen a few matches which they won undeservedly, so they might well suffer that fate at least once. In the end the debate of whether a victory is deserved or not leads to nothing anyway. Who wins, wins. Who loses, loses. Therefore, I still feel free not wanting Germany to win the championship..

But what I want to talk about is the team’s composition. In quite a lot of talks about the German team somebody always pointed at the players origins: “Germany? Just look at that team! Podolski, Klose and Bierowka are Polish, Neuville is Swiss; Asamoah and Odonkor don’t really look like typical Germans either.”

When Eric and Sylwia mentioned that fact, it was partly understandable. They’re both of Polish origin and it must be pretty difficult to see Poland dropping out early while Klose and Podolski have scored 8 of Germany’s 11 goals. Before the match Germany vs. Poland Sylwias father told her he would support Germany because that way at least three Polish players could be successful, while their team as such hadn’t got any chances to win the cup anyway. Sylwia dismissed that logic and jokingly compared it to cheering for collaborators. During that match it was obvious how difficult it was for her to see them play “for the wrong team” as she put it and when both Klose and Podolski failed to score from best positions she claimed: “Well, they can’t score against their country. That just doesn’t work.” Ironically this proved to be correct. In the end the only goal was scored by Neuville and this match has remained the only one so far where neither Klose nor Podolski scored. (I don’t want to imagine those two players being of Austrians origin because that fact would be mentioned at every suitable and unsuitable opportunity in snivelling national pride, which would simply be unbearable. I mean, our sports commentators already declare a foreign national player practically Austrian if his wife’s dog has once been to Austria.)

However, I did not hear those comments from Eric and Sylwia only, which quite surprised me. I mean I would expect them in traditional European national states - and even there rather from conservative people – but not in Canada, a typical immigration country! I’d also understand the criticism if Germany had quickly picked players who don’t speak the language and who haven’t got any true connection to the country and just naturalised them in order to create a good team. I would reject those practices as well because that’s not the idea of having a national team. However, that isn’t the case for the German team. As far as I know most of them, at least Podolski and Klose, have come to Germany in their childhood or youth and have grown up there. So who dares to doubt those players’ German identity? I rate this issue a very sensitive one and thus reacted quite sensitively on that belabouring of the supposed un-German-ness of the German team. When Eric questioned the purity of the “German” team for the second time I commented in dry irony: “You do realise that that’s not very fair, don’t you? Since 60 years Germany has been criticised for its nationalism and now it’s criticised for being such an open society. You really should decide for one of them...”

In fact that remark was meant rather seriously than funny. In my opinion the quality of such criticism isn’t much different than that of the German extreme right party NPD, whose World Cup planner showed a (white) player with the number 25 (which then was the number of Patrick Owomoyela, son of a Nigerian-German couple) and the slogan “Weiß. Nicht nur eine Trikot-Farbe! Für eine echte NATIONAL-Mannschaft!“ (“White. Not just a jersey colour! For a true NATIONAL team!”) (Source) After Owomoyela had sued sucessfully the NPD issued a second planner, which, however, wasn’t any less explicit. It featured a German team with only one white player and asked: "Nationalelf 2010?" (“National team 2010?”). This time it was the German Football Association DFB who sued – successfully and this planner had to be withdrawn from circulation as well. (Source)

In fact the NPD’s current behaviour is fairly interesting and once again proofs the inconsistency of the like extreme right wing philosophy. The party argues that its stance is supported by a poll of sports-magazine “Kicker” which enquired the Germans’ ideal team and – as the NPD satisfactorily notes – people did not at all mention supposed “quota-Germans” such as Asamoah und Owomoyela. Accordingly the NPD listed the mentioned real Germans on their web page including – without any mentioning of their heritage of course - Podolski, Klose and Borowski. In conclusion – to use the right extremist vocabulary –the NPD obviously opposes “niggers” in the German team but is only too ready to turn “Slavic subhuman beings” into proper and pure Arians, when their heritage can’t be heard or seen. (Of course it’s also typical that the party supported the Iranian team – “terrorist heathens” so to say – against their common enemy USA, also known as “puppet of Israel and the Jewish East coast”.) What a truly national philosophy! How good, that good old uncle Adolf doesn’t have to witness this..

I think it’s good that the team is how it is. Doesn’t it reflect today’s German reality better than an all white all German-German team? It’s a fact that Germany is not a uniform national state, as the NPD would want it to be, but a naturally developing (and not at all imposed) multicultural society. Doesn’t it show that Germany is (or works on being) not a stubborn and boring country but an open and tolerant society? Doesn’t it make clear that immigrants should be generally welcome because independently from origins, religion or colour of the skin they may be willing to give their best for their new home country and in fact Germany greatly benefits from their work?

So, in this respect I really support the German team. However, having said this I also have to criticise the state as such for not being consistent. For countries such as the Netherlands (which for decades actively supported a multicultural society) and France (where cultural differences did not exist because everyone was French) I think it’s completely legitimate to have a national team consisting to a high percentage of players with migration background. But in concern of Germany it seems a bit strange that the respective players entered the country and have been naturalised at a time when politics still proudly declared: “Germany is not an immigration country!” Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fine that the team is as it is – but those politicians who now visit the stadiums and cheer for the German national team should really keep in mind this team’s composition next time they discuss immigration issues.