I wanted to post this to SI's biggest soccer fan, so here you go... <G>
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Greece vs. Germany Spills Off the Soccer Field
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/world/europe/greece-vs-germany-spills-off-soccer-field.html?_r=1
By NICHOLAS KULISHPublished: June 22, 2012
GDANSK, Poland — The giant blue-and-white flag blotted out the overcast Baltic sky on Friday as the Greek fans pounded their drums and cheered at the foot of the centuries-old City Hall here. The Germans took up a chant in honor of their chancellor, Angela Merkel.
“Without Angie, you wouldn’t be here,” bellowed the German fans, referring to the multibillion-dollar bailouts Greece has received from European partners, first and foremost Germany.
“We’ll never pay you back,” countered the Greeks. “We’ll never pay you back.”
The leaders of Germany and Greece may be scrambling to hold Europe together, but on the popular level the strain of a three-year-old financial crisis is beginning to tear it apart. And while the European soccer championships have often served as a safe outlet for channeling nationalist passions in the European pastime, for Greeks and Germans — brought to together by chance in the quarterfinals here — it has turned into more than a game.
“They’ve provoked us with all of this terrible talk about Greece,” said Dimitrios Gorovelis, 33, part of a group from Aachen, in the far west of Germany, that had rented two silver vans and driven overnight to support Greece. Some were originally from Greece, others were born in Germany, but they all worked in the restaurant business and all were there to support the motherland.
For Greeks, Germany now represents austerity and foreign diktats. For Germans, the Greeks represent tax-dodging wastrels looking for handouts. “Goodbye Greeks,” declared the front page of the daily newspaper Bild on Friday; the paper has previously published calls for Greek islands and even the Acropolis to be sold. “Today we can’t rescue you.”
“A lot of people, including myself, would have never thought even just a few short years ago that the relationship could deteriorate the way that it has,” said Janis A. Emmanouilidis, a senior policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, who is half-Greek and half-German, citing the ties of migration and tourism, the regard Germany held for Greece as the cradle of democracy and Greece for Germany as a model of efficiency.
“You have these reflexes, like defending oneself,” Mr. Emmanouilidis said.
To be sure, everyone from soccer experts to political analysts to fans cautioned that, in the end, the only thing on the line was the right to move on to the semifinals. And for the most part, the mood on Gdansk’s historic Dluga Street was peaceful and joyous.
Still, one middle-aged Greek implored Germans in their own language, his voice quavering with anger, to stop teasing about pensions and poverty “before things escalate into violence.” A man in a German jersey rushed from the crowd and gave him a hug.
The tournament takes place every four years, but this time around has been scrutinized from the very beginning through the kaleidoscope of the Continent’s crisis, with Twitter users, headline writers and barroom wits comparing the records of bailout countries to triple-A-rated ones with more than a hint of Schadenfreude.
Portugal, which was forced to seek financial assistance, was the first country to qualify for the semifinals. The Netherlands, a traditional soccer powerhouse with a sterling credit rating, lost all of its matches. But nothing quite compares to this match, between the two major antagonists of the crisis, who have been trading increasingly nasty barbs for more than two years.
Gdansk, with its intertwined Polish-German history and recent Communist past, is a fitting location to realize how far from the old cleavages of the cold war and East-West thinking Europe has moved, to a new paradigm of a hard-money north led by Germany starkly at odds with a soft money south, which would not be such a problem if they did not also share a currency and a central bank.
A mere eight years ago, Germans and Greeks alike celebrated Greece’s dark horse run to the title under a German coach, Otto Rehhagel, who many took to calling “King Otto,” a reference to the Bavarian who became king of Greece in the 19th century. Greeks have made clear that they want Ms. Merkel as neither coach nor queen.
Indeed, every time Ms. Merkel appeared on the giant monitors in the stadium here, cheering Germany on, the blue-clad Greeks booed and whistled with gusto.“This is a football game, but it also has a political message,” said Giorgos Helakis, 48, the editor of Sport Day newspaper in Greece, who came to Gdansk for the match. Sport Day on Friday ran the headline “Bankrupt them!”
In Germany, there is frustration over what is perceived as insults in exchange for assistance. Nazi taunts at protests and in newspapers against the Germans, who invaded Greece during World War II, have not gone unnoticed in Berlin.
After all was said and done, soccer lovers cautioned against loading up the match with too much significance.
“If you’re thinking about politics on the field,” Günter Netzer, a German soccer legend, former European champion and longtime commentator for German public television, said in a telephone interview, “you’re in the wrong profession.”
As for the game itself, Germany won, 4-2.
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