Beer and the Fifth Beatle
What I have always loved about the Hofbrauhaus experience in Munich is that the big, angry fraulein-waitress always delivers the 12 steins of beer to the one table at the same time. And she has no time for grins or fluffy talk, she is focussed on her job and she does it well. Scarily well.
The other important thing is that there is no room in the order for a bourbon and coke or a sauv blanc. The experience is all about everyone working as a unit and getting hammered on the same stuff at the same time.
Like the Hofbrauhaus experience, German football is about inclusiveness, getting from Point A to B pretty quickly and saying “no” to anything that comes with a cocktail umbrella - far too much form with little function.
In fact, I reckon they’d knock back Ronaldo aka “The Gelled One” and his offer of eight step-overs with a twist of lemon because he’d want his number on the said cocktail umbrella and would probably just prattle on about Castrol oil.
I have always loved the German style of World Footy and, after the 2006 World Cup, said that someone like Juergen Klinsmann should coach the Socceroos. For the record, I also liked Ricardo Lavolpe, the angry Argentinian who coached Mexico in that tournament for the same reason. Both Germany and Mexico built their squads around pace, fast breaks and decisive movements as Hiddink did with the Socceroos. For me, that was the way forward because it would be playing to our strengths.
Many said that the man behind Juergen at the last World Cup was Joachim Low aka The Fifth Beatle.
Uber meister Low works with what he’s got, he gets the mix between youth and experience right and makes it about the midfielders serving the two prongs with killer diagonals, jubilani or not. And so far, losing Ballack has not been a problem. In fact, Germany shows us that even out of form strikers can rise with the right service.
The Socceroos will probably never play like Brazilians and that’s ok because we have the physical presence, the hunger, technical ability and attitude to play like Germans.
Rather than go wide and whip it over via a floated diagonal all of the time, let’s have a crack at kicking into space with piercing through balls. The Germany team don’t occupy a space, they wait and then fill it and they fill it really quickly. Let’s maraud like they do, it looks like fun.
If any good came out our 4 zip loss to Germany, let it be that we took notes on how to play positive, attacking football because we had them rattled for the 5 minutes at the start when we actually did.
I don’t want to go Dutch anymore. Let’s go Deutsch. I’d happily drink to that, I’d even get the first shout.
Vinnie Venezueala
