It doesn’t get any worse than this: These guys on and off the lawn just can’t behave, man man man.
Real men love pyro, women prefer soccer Photo: Reuters
Finally Bundesliga again! Finally fighting for the vice championship again! But what kind of football is that? We had been looking forward to it for weeks and recently saw plenty of impressive examples of this sport in England: how to press, combine, tactically adeptly slow down the opponent and score such fantastic header goals as Alex Popp did against France that Uwe Seeler and Horst Hrubesch cried in each other’s arms were lucky. So the anticipation was great.
Well, Frankfurt had created a few nice chances, Union even scored well, Hertha duped, and Christian Streich impressed with the formulation that opponents Augsburg had “tried to crack us”. The obfuscation of the stadiums with flares is now celebrated as a “pyro show” (sports show) and Wolfsburg botched the start of the season after just 90 minutes: only 1 point from 2 games.
And otherwise? We almost forgot how men’s football works. The celebrations last about twice as long as for women. The self-pitying look about the ouch including emergency surgery on the lawn statistically lasts a full 30 seconds more. Or the masculine yelling attacks on the referee quartet: on the edge of the field, the trainers cursed the lightning rod of the executive (“4th official”) – on Saturday Kovac and Terzic in front. On the pitch, the referees listen.
The constant spitting (currently Kolo Muani after a goal, Jude Bellingham after a shot missed) has remained – and is genetically defined: I have uncovered my pipe, the spitter wants to say, psychologists explain. Or he just marks his territory. In terms of gender logic, braided football does not need to be mentioned, including packs and ear-scratching during the interview.
Do you actually know whether soccer men are just as reluctant to be compared to kicking women as vice versa? We avoid being too strict here. After all, the men are still practicing: the German women are world leaders (2nd place in the Fifa rankings), the Flick elite are only followers in 11th place. And the findings from the women’s championship are still too fresh for immediate learning. So we still have to work on that.
The start of the 60th season is the first with a woman at the top of the German Football League. Maybe Donata Hopfen can explain a few basics to the men. Of the Southgerman newspaper she said this beautiful sentence: “Football is the last remaining campfire in society.”
–
