Geheimfavorit

the concept of national football selections competing is highly problematic. not only that “nation” itself should not be supported as prime category of identity at the expense of social agreements, it’s for example simply awkward to have angela merkel or any politician in the dressing room of the german or any football selection. even worse when this link-up finds a further compound with politics of the day as at the 2012 european championships when germany lift the finger to point at host ukraine, just to give blitzkrieg to greece in the quarterfinals.

unfortunately the german team (live-commentators still hail to the “german virtues” of the “troop”) that meanwhile became the figurehead of a shinny happy people multicultural germany (that doesn’t of course exist in that form) will never surprise with a masterpiece as the english (also a difficult construction when it comes to football) did in 1990 when they hired the a-team new order from “madchester” to blast everyone with their self expression.

germany in the end won the 1990 world cup with england as one of their victims. but in first match germany had to face the expert’s “geheimfavorit” yugoslavia. they sent a generation of players at their peak and “the emporer” “kaiser” franz beckenbauer had to yell at his team half time not to lose the crucial battle against the partisans. at that time the yugoslav players were already used to different sceneries from their stadiums back home, the outbreak of ethnical conflicts that lead to new “nations” via civil war, first time practiced in zagreb when dinamo played crvena zvezda (red star) from beograd. germany won 4-1.

crvena zvezda, a team consisting of yugoslavs from all yugoslav nations (respectively ethnics), proved the “geheimfavorit”-status one year later when players like sinisa mihajlovic, dejan savicevic, robert prosinecki or darko pancev won the european cup after defeating bayern munich in semi-finals in a tragic 2nd leg game that broke my bavarian heart.

today in 2013 small hope glimmers with bosnia and herzegovina first time qualifying for a international tournament, the 2014 world cup in brazil (no words here about brazil and qatar and the craziness of organized football at all) . the case of bosnia and herzegovina makes the exception where nation building via football might be okay. sadly republika srpska thinks about it’s own team in independence from bosnia and herzegovina. but i made my choice, bosnia and herzegovina are my team at the upcoming world cup. hajde da se bonsai i hercegovina…

(((so by the way, if anyone catches a official bosnian shirt in xl, you’ll make me pretty happy…)))

meanwhile despite my choice, i also made up my official selection as you see in the pic on top.