Do believe the hype. England goalie du jour David James is as erudite as a footballer can possibly be, but his news-conference attempts to pass off the England-Germany clash as "just another game" are risible. As any English fan who has lived, and mostly died, with the England team over the past 44 years will tell you: It may just be the round of 16, but this is the Big One.
In case you missed England's opening-round travails, here's our World Cup story so far: We are lackluster. Our team was booed off after a turgid second-game tie against the mighty Desert Foxes of Algeria. Don Fabio, our Italian coaching mastermind, appeared to buckle briefly only to recover when the opportunity to brutally repress a one-man coup fomented by a deluded former captain materialized. One scrappy, crappy win against the powerhouse Green Dragons of Slovenia changed everything. Jermain Defoe's shinned-in goal catalyzed a tabloid mood swing, from doomsday to delirious. A nation believes once more. The Cup is as good as ours.
And now, enter, stage right, England's No. 1 foe: the Germans. Cue English jingoistic saber-rattling. A posturing born of keen awareness that in this matchup, Deutschland has most definitely been über, über alles. For the English in this fixture, resistance has largely proved futile.
Round 1: 1966 final
And to think, the story started so well from an English perspective. A controversial goal in our first and only World Cup final handed England a famous victory. (Apocryphal side note: When Soviet linesman Tofik Bakhramov was asked on his deathbed how he was sure the ball had actually crossed the line, he gave a one-word reply: "Stalingrad," referring to the brutal World War II battle in which more than a million Soviets lost their lives.)
Round 2: 1970 quarterfinals
The Germans only had to wait four years to wreak their revenge. Led by Franz "Der Kaiser" Beckenbauer, they prised the cup from English hands by storming back from a two-goal deficit aided, it may come as no surprise to discover, by a couple of goalkeeping howlers that left the English feeling as if we had been mugged.
Round 3: 1990 semifinals
The English started slowly, scraping through the opening round (sound familiar?) but emerged with brittle confidence bolstered by a tabloid media frenzy escalating to fever pitch as the team fought through to a semifinal against the Germans. Led by the flamboyant genius of Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne (when I watch this video today, it still gives me shivers -- the visceral memories, not the music) the English should have done better than tie in regulation. But once the game went to penalties there would be only one winner. The shootout became England's equivalent of a poisoned chalice in World Cups and Euros to come.
Round 4: 2002
If it is possible for a national psyche to have its back broken, the narrative of this tournament would have had this effect. One year earlier in qualifying, a tepid German team let us duff them up 5-1 in their own backyard. (This victory became the muse to what OTB podlisteners know is one of Michael Davies' favorite chants: "5-1! Even Heskey scored! 5-1! Even Heskey scored!") England left Munich with our collective chest puffed out, as if we had not just won a footy match, but sacked the city. Germany limped off like a wounded dog to lick its wounds. Surely now we English had only to wait patiently to collect our cup. But come tournament time, the Germans shook off the ignominy of the crushing defeat and rambled into the finals, business as usual, while the Three Lions meekly succumbed in the quarterfinals, losing 2-1 to Brazil. We never knew what hit us.
And so an all-too-familiar pattern has been established: hyperbolic English pregame confidence, even hubris. The Germans finding a way -- any way -- to win. We English left to salve the wounds of humiliation and self-loathing by crafting a new salvo of simmering insults, guaranteed to have come to full boil by the time we inevitably clash again. And we always do. For the English, the wreckage from this clash has littered itself across World Cup history.
When English author George Orwell said that sport was war minus the shooting, he may have had this tie in mind. Few sporting occasions have inspired more frenzied rehashing of war imagery, something we English do best. Without it, we may become just another middling soccer team and -- worse -- one that always loses to the Germans. Before the 1990 clash, The Sun thoughtfully provided readers with a front page consisting of several crudely photoshopped World War II images arranged beneath a headline screaming, "HELP OUR BOYS CLOUT THE KRAUTS." Expect the echoes of the Battle of Britain, Dambusters, the Great Escape and the English taunt/chant "Two World Wars and One World Cup" (brilliantly parodied in this South African commercial) to continue deep into the 21st century. This World Cup in which "France are out, Italy have capitulated, and England are left alone to face the Germans" makes crude war parallels almost too easy.
The fixture is treated slightly differently in Germany, a team with so many toxic rivalries that they almost have to line up and take a number. (Just ask the French or Dutch.) While the English fret (star striker-turned-broadcaster Gary Lineker once famously complained, "Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball … and in the end, Germany always wins") the Germans bait us by generally disregarding our threat and then trumping us on the field as if it was all no big deal.
This week the Berliner Zeitung feigned excitement, mustering the puny headline, "Yes! Now we are going to sort out the little English girlies." The iconic Franz Beckenbauer attempted to demoralize us by accusing the English team of being "kick and rush" (doesn't he know how we long for an English performance in which there was some actual rushing/urgency involved?), but the other big story tumbling out of the German press was that of a zoo-bound "Octopus Oracle" named Paul who predicted a German win over England by choosing a mussel out of a water glass marked with the German flag over a mussel in a glass with the English St. George's Cross. Fighting talk.
This game is made more complex by the fact that the German team has flipped the script on us. Through the '80s and the '90s, the Germans were an experienced, consistent, relentless machine. A Teutonic Walmart. The Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper memorably quipped, "A World Cup without Germany would be like 'Star Wars' without Darth Vader." But while hosting the 2006 tournament Hugo Boss-clad coach Jurgen Klinsmann fielded a vastly inexperienced, underrated team, and managed the impossible: to rebrand German football as plucky and positive. A team you could only admire.
This year has been more of the same. It should be said this World Cup has been confusing for anyone of English descent. We are drab, dank and joyless. The Germans are full of movement and ambition, and the Argentineans, our other great rivals, are a passionate marvel it is hard not to enjoy. The English press have made bold attempts to adjust to this confusing new reality. The Daily Mail pumped up the national pulse by lobbing around some casual xenophobia examining the multicultural backgrounds of the German squad and asking, "ARE YOU POLAND -- OR TURKEY, GHANA, BOSNIA AND BRAZIL -- IN DISGUISE?" -- artfully pushing two nerves at once: the country's hatred of all things German and its fear of illegal immigrants.
And so, to Sunday. The Germans have overcome a raft of injuries by relying on youth. Perky playmaker Mesut Ozil (the first German to quote the Koran in the locker room before games, according to the Guardian) leads a very human squad that has even demonstrated vulnerability by missing the first German penalty since 1974. In this tie, England is the team that has emphasized experience over style to grind out results. It is hard to imagine a squad as far from the fearless "Dambusters" spirit as this one. More pouty bottom lip than stiff upper lip.
For the Germans, it is critical that midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger pass a fitness test to shore up a back line that will be tested. Wayne Rooney will be key. The Englishman has cut a frustrated figure thus far, perhaps aware he has been the second-best Rooney at this World Cup, his performance still bettered by the bold national-anthem blubbering of North Korea's "People's Rooney." Will Wayne come alive, and if he does, can the patchwork German defense contain him?
It pains me as an Englishman, however, to type this: It is sometimes hard to keep believing. We have been doomed so many times. There comes a point where to do so is akin to knowingly attempt a field goal with Lucy from "Peanuts" performing holding duties. The specter of penalties looms large and has dominated the news conferences. Fabio Capello attempted to assuage the fears of the nation by announcing as far back as December that he has his list of five penalty takers firmly in mind, but when David James was quizzed about penalty practice this week, he admitted: "It's a difficult one if we keep saving them. It doesn't give any confidence to the outfield players."
The Germans have no such qualms. And we know it. Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher played the arch-German clinical stereotype to perfection in an interview this week: "I'm sorry for the English-speaking nation on Sunday, what you have to face and go through. It's tough on you. We have better statistics. I'm sorry about that, but that's what it is."