Measly Germans

F oul Play had intended to use this fort night’s space to ponder Meath’s surprise rogering of Kerry in the football championship semi-final, but in the wake of Germany’s even more incredible capitulation to England, the temptation to rattle off a column addressing events in Munich proved irresistible.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a piece belittling Team Ingerland’s newly-discovered pretensions to greatness (although Foul Play is exercising every atom of restraint in his body to prevent it from turning into one). No, the real story here is not the rebirth (sic) of England, who apart from Beckham and Owen are still a collection of very ordinary players, but the staggering decline of the Germans.

The 5-1 score may well be England’s best result in 35 years (which isn’t saying that much), and they are well entitled to savour it. But the sad truth is that this is an absolutely desperate German side, full of shite players who in past decades wouldn’t have been allowed to spectate at the training sessions, never mind get into the starting XI. Indeed, it is almost certainly the worst German team ever. After the Munich debacle, you would be reluctant to have an each-way bet on Rudi Völler’s team in an exhibition match against Moldova.

Against England, many of the players looked as though they had never trained together before. One of the centre-backs, Thomas Linke, appeared completely unfit for international football. The team’s alleged creative genius, Sebastian Deisler, contributed nothing except to shoot wide of an open goal with the score at 1-1.

Equally, it is inconceivable that the German populace (80 million, last time I looked) does not contain within its massed ranks a better centre-forward than Carsten Jancker, whose commitment to the Fatherland’s cause cannot be questioned, but whose technique, positional sense, first touch and second touch most certainly can.

And what in the name of Christ was Oliver Kahn playing at? His howlers for Michael Owen’s first two goals constituted a greater amount of errors than the man usually commits in a whole season for Bayern Munich.

Consequently, the German press and media have since engaged in a prolonged bout of anguished psychoanalysis and hand-wringing about What Must Be Done with the current Nationalmannschaft. Foul Play has a suggestion of his own, but seeing as it involves eleven lengths of rope and a similar number of scaffolds, I don’t expect it to be taken up by Herr Völler and friends.

Now it looks as though they will be forced to endure an extremely uncomfortable play-off against either Belarus or Ukraine, probably the latter. Ukraine have Andriy Shevchenko, surely the best striker in the world, but Belarus is reported to be colder in November. It’s a tough call.

2002 is certainly shaping up to be a World Cup with a cast of characters virtually unrecognisable from its predecessor. Senegal, Costa Rica and Poland have all already qualified, in the process administering severe kickings to the hindquarters of more heavily-fancied outfits.

Ecuador, Honduras and China look set to join them, and, if we are really lucky, we could be treated to a glimpse of little Bahrain (he said patronisingly) next summer. There may even be the small matter of a November play-off against some nickel-and-dime European outfit to detain them first.

It seems to be open season on the big guns at present. Holland have already been tossed out with the empties, as we know, and with any luck the wretched Germans will follow them.

Brazil got turned over again last week, this time by an already-qualified Argentinian team in Buenos Aires, and the ominous spectre of a two-leg eliminator against Australia is starting to loom out of the mist.

Given that Brazil are traditionally thought of as the sexiest of the main attractions at World Cups, and that they have lost five times as many qualifiers this year as they have in the preceding 15 tournaments, it would be interesting to study the reaction of FIFA’s people in the event of them failing to make it. Would the sudden and surreptitious introduction of a “wild card”-type system be entirely out of the question, or is Foul Play just in a particularly cynical mood this morning?

And then we have Slovenia, who are rapidly becoming my favourite team in the entire world.

Having beaten Russia on the Saturday, they took a point away to Yugoslavia on the Wednesday, and now only need to beat the Faroe Islands at home to set up a play-off with Romania.

For a tiny region like Slovenia to separate themselves from the Yugoslavian Federation and enter European football with only one recognised international-class player in their national team squad (as they did), and then turn themselves into one of the most dangerous outfits in Europe, is like the equivalent of Cornwall seceding from England, with Nigel Martyn as their star player, and then qualifying for and performing with great distinction at Euro 2000 (as, you will remember, Slovenia did).

Those of us who read perhaps slightly too much into the Holland game will be inclined to think of Ireland as bringing a bit of much-needed colour and craic to the 2002 finals, but Slovenia can lay claim to the neutrals’ vote in a way that Ireland never could.

They knock it around in a more watchable fashion than we do, for one thing, and their kit is nicer than ours, for another.