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[Ed. note: due to the July 4 hiatus, we were unable to post this notice until after yesterday's events.] From: Andre Wakefield <Andre_Wakefield@pitzer.edu> Subject: Re: Boettcher on the World Cup in Wolfenbüttel Date: Sunday, July 2, 2006 Let me say it up front: I am a serious Fussball fan. I know this opens me up to serious ridicule and even contempt, but I'm used to it. I don't intend to wow you with some long, incisive discursus on football and nationalism. I have, however, noticed something missing in the discussion; namely, no one seems to care about _this particular team_. Is it completely unimportant who wears the jerseys? Certainly, all off those flag-waving, beer-swilling, football watching louts we've been fretting about know every last detail about their heroes. So who are these guys? The genius behind it all is of course Jürgen Klinsmann. He lives in California with his Chinese-American wife. The old-guard here vilified him for months before the tournament started. They hated him because he didn't live here; they hated him because he wasn't German enough. Lothar Matthäus all but said as much. But now things are different. With his "American training methods" and his aggressive cosmopolitanism, and most of all with his victories, Klinsmann has won over the nation. Not only that, he's made heroes of David Odonkor (father from Ghana and a Black Panther tattoo, in honor of Huey Newton, on his upper left arm), Miroslav Klose (born in Poland, speaks Polish, loves Poland), Oliver Neuville (Italian mother, still had Italian and Swiss passports on his 18th birthday), Lukas Podolski (born in Poland, speaks Polish, recent article explained that his favorite place on the planet was his grandmother's house in Poland), and Gerald Asamoah (born in Ghana, chooses all the "tunes" for the national team before each match). We've come a long way from Sepp Herberger's (member, Nazi Party) 1954 Bern Wunder. Symbols matter, especially if they wear national soccer jerseys. The old boys in the DFB (Deutscher Fussball-Bund) wanted this team to fail. That's reason enough to cheer them on. So pull up a chair, grab a beer, and enjoy the show. Andre Wakefield Pitzer College
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