“There is one subject where Germany’s image is certainly bad,” Mr. Moscovici told an auditorium full of students at the Free University in Berlin. “Germany wins too often at soccer, particularly now in the Champions League.”
Europe’s equivalent of the Super Bowl does not kick off for more than two weeks, but in a development that feels all too fitting under the current circumstances here, Germany has already won. Two German clubs, one from Dortmund in the Ruhr Valley and the other from Munich in deepest Bavaria, will face off for the European title, which means the nationality of the champion is already assured.
The local news media is calling it the “dream final.” The daily newspaper Berliner Kurier summed up the mood in Germany perfectly in a front-page headline last week that read simply: “We versus us.”
“One thing is certain,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “Germany wins.”
Of course, a game is just a game, but when the game in question is European soccer, it tends to be viewed as a Rorschach test for the health and confidence of nations. The success on the field of German teams has helped reinforce the broader narrative of Teutonic dominance that has emerged during the years-long debt crisis.
Germany’s stock market is riding high, its unemployment rate has remained stubbornly low and the Continent’s best and brightest are moving here in droves. Attitudes toward Germany in Europe are more complicated than they would seem from the images of angry protesters waving signs with swastikas on the streets of Athens.
Europe’s largest economy is viewed not only with resentment but with a mixture of apprehension, envy and admiration, informed by a belief that the Germans have cracked the code of how to compete in the globalized world, coupled with an uncertainty about whether their efficient, export-driven economic model can be replicated.
Much the same is true currently with soccer. After Bayern trounced Barcelona for the second time in a row last week, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote that “the lesson of order and talent goes beyond soccer.” In Britain, the cover of the New Statesman magazine this week shows photographs of Angela Merkel and German soccer star Bastian Schweinsteiger with the question, “Why can’t we be more like Germany?”
Just this past weekend Spain’s Socialists discussed the German model for helping companies pay for idled workers to stay home without laying them off. “There is resentment at the current austerity policies attributed to Merkel,” said Jordi Vaquer i Fanés, a political scientist and director of the Open Society Initiative for Europe in Barcelona, “but Germany still comes out at the top of the most admired countries.”
Europeans are voting with their feet: The government statistics office reported Tuesday that 2012 saw the largest net gain in migration here in 17 years. Nearly 1.1 million people moved to Germany last year, with rising numbers of jobseekers arriving from crisis-stricken countries and Eastern Europe. Nationwide, unemployment is just 5.4 percent, and on Tuesday Germany’s main stock index, the benchmark DAX, hit an all-time high.
Spain is losing not just engineers and software designers to Germany, but players and coaches. Pep Guardiola, Barcelona’s former coaching genius, announced this year that he would move to Germany to coach Bayern. A decade ago the idea of a coach like Mr. Guardiola leaving Spain for Germany would have seemed absurd.
Chris Cottrell contributed reporting from Berlin; Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome; and Raphael Minder from Madrid.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/world/europe/germany-extends-its-success-to-the-soccer-field.html?partner=rss&emc=rss