COPA MUNDIAL

click to enlarge schnitzel

COPA MUNDIAL (June 2006)

This could not be the shirt that I ordered!

J. Crew is way over our budget but when there is a sale, $24 for a nice tailored shirt isn’t bad. The two polos packed flat looked ok. But out of the other package an uneven ball rolled out. Sensing sabotage on the part of someone who hides behind “inspected by #13,” I unwrapped it and a pink men’s shirt popped out, …all wrinkled! Inside of the rolled up shirt was a note: “Crumpled by design especially for you!” Listen, everyone, wrinkled shirts are officially “in” this season!

Who has time for ironing anyway when the Mundial is on! World Cup 2006, in case you missed it. While millions of Americans were preoccupied with guessing who the next American Idol would be, the world prepared for the Soccer Championships. My two homegrown fans tried to get the tickets for Poland’s games, with no luck, then… any games, accomplished nothing there, oh well …went anyway.

Wearing stylishly wrinkled shirts, father and son, within days of arriving in Warsaw, took a ride to Berlin on the express train added especially for a German- Polish Friendship Month.
Obviously it was not the same Berlin that my husband Jacek left 21 years ago to move to Zell on the banks of the Mosel River, a little town in the middle of “weinberg country” to await our (mine and our little daughter’s) arrival.

The “new” Berlin welcomed them with only three days old Hauptbanhof train station, Daimler Chrysler City complex of modern office buildings, Sony Center resembling a circus tent made all of glass, housing the Museum of Film, TV studios and an I-MAX theatre.

The Wall long dismantled, and the only trabant they spotted (a car formerly manufactured in East Germany), was actually on the Western side of the city.
They came upon some remnants of the infamous wall here and there and a memorial of white crosses to those who lost their lives trying to escape Communism. Strangely, the last person shot for crossing (may even be the last victim of the Cold War, who knows?) was killed only months before the Wall fell. If he would have only waited, he could have just walked over and celebrated with a bottle of champagne in one hand and sledgehammer in the other.

The modest but clean and comfortable hostel, booked ahead of time, was conveniently

located in the heart of East Berlin. Now a busy section full of shops, galleries and restaurants. Jacek and Francis, budget travelers, explored the Western part but dined on “Schnitzel und Kartoffeln fur zwei Personen” in Eastern Berlin in less divine style but still pleasantly common.
On budget, yet how different from the times when Jacek just like many others used to give blood to survive. Poles donating blood to Germans? That’s right. How humanly, un-selfish, yet very logical and typical of Polish immigrants… short on cash.

Years later in the US, we remembered that, when after 9/11 our daughter wanted to donate blood but was told that she can’t because she traveled to Central or Eastern Europe within the last 6 months. Huh? Then maybe we should consider removal of our names from the donor list, if the blood is not good, then what is the use of bad organs?

These days, the crowd in Berlin was the most diverse. As soccer fans from around the world began to arrive the prices went up, and so did the street noise. And not just in
Berlin, as the fans followed their teams to Dortmund, Nuremberg, Hanover, Gelsenkirchen…the colorful procession went with it. It only happens every four years! And even I got into the global mood. As the guys were watching it over there (Francis wore Ebi Smolarek’s jersey, that he bought in Berlin, during every game for good luck) Francis’ girlfriend watched it over here and e-mailed me every two minutes with comments such as “Mrs. Ball who should I cheer for?” after all the countries she has ties with were kicked out from their groups. Shiva is Persian (all three Iran, Poland and the US were eliminated). I told her that in that case root for the underdog or … the cute guys. So she and her roommate checked every guy on every team. I have FIFA World Cup in my “favorites” and gave them some pointers. I ranked Argentina’s number 9, Crespo, as my favorite while Shiva stuck to Polish goalkeeper Artur Boruc claiming that Boruc and my son are the cutest. But she cannot be an objective judge and neither can I.

The most nerve-wracking was the Poland versus Germany match. Although, sometimes you had the feeling that it was Poland vs. Poland when Miroslaw Klose and Lukasz Podolski (top goal scoring duo for the German team) were aiming at our net. Both have Polish girlfriends, and I mean real Polish girlfriends who cook real Polish food.
What’s a better advertisement for Poland than this?

Soccer indeed, is the international language, as my son realized while staying in hostels from Miami to Montreal. No matter where you go and whom you stay with, speaking soccer breaks all the barriers.

I like the idea that the whole world is involved in the game and that some small country like Tunisia or Trinidad and Tobago has a chance to beat Spain or Ukraine. When the United States’ team sweats not to give out to the Czech Republic, and when Ghana may beat Italy and Poland falls to Ecuador! It was at that game that the Polish team terribly disappointed 45 thousand cheering fans (not counting millions in front of TVs) while the stadium turned totally white and red. The Poles played a lousy game, but if they had tried harder and actually won, the charged fans and the chanting and beating of drums could easily have caused a small earthquake. They had a good chance, but as always, never used it. As they did not trust themselves that they could beat the Germans.
But the Polish team lost this World Cup even before they left Poland, by not selecting Frankowski, the one player who actually scores and the one who allowed them to qualify. Another reason may be the fact that coach Janas is a former defensive player so the Poles in the match against the Germans showed good defense, but they played to tie and not to win, a serious error in sports.
This idea came from Poland’s ex coach Piechniczek. A self-proclaimed expert, who during press conferences claimed that Poland could never beat the Germans. And such a person sits side by side with Poland’s present coach and poisons players with stupid ideas, as if the tie would have made a difference.

It was as if there was an invisible fence preventing them from attacking. The only player that actually scored (and he scored twice!) in the last game with Costa Rica (Poles do well playing for honor) was a …defender. Where was Poland’s offense?

Days before the Mundial, comments about Janas’ selections were “is he mad?” now they turned to “fire Janas.” One person on a people’s forum compared Janas’ communication skills to … a refrigerator “it hums something but nobody knows what.”
Yes, it was officially said in some German tabloids that Poland had bad players but the best fans. In that category Poles did wunderbar.
Smolarek’s good luck charm did not help but Francis came home with a great jersey.

Besides being fun to watch, it is the number one game in the whole world. It is soccer that brings power in you to scream at the top of your lungs and show sometimes the ugliest war colors, to… only within days, become a fan of the team that you played against! If your team is still in the game in the early group stages, its loss does not necessarily mean that they do not advance. Sometimes your luck acts in the strangest way. It depends on how other teams in your group score.

This is the place where after the game, teams exchange jerseys, where white players exchange jerseys with players from Africa. So do fans, with the few Polish fans especially maneuvering among the crowd to exchange their jerseys exclusively with good-looking Costa Rican female fans. How typically Polish! Where continents meet and where rich and poor countries are equal. Even more, the place where fans may wear both playing teams’ colors. It wasn’t unusual to see fans wearing Poland and Ecuador colors together. Where after every game, no matter what the score was, both fans partied, as they were friends forever. I watched it on my TV screen, and I loved every minute of it. My son’s girlfriend was probably the only person cheering for Poland at the Goethe Institute in Boston; she survived and proved to be a great Polish fan. Shiva knew all the showing times and channels, games spread out from ABC to Tele-Mundo only. That’s when Shiva’s Spanish (that she studied at school) came handy. When Iran was eliminated, Poland was out as well and the USA did not have good chances either. But we kept watching…

Oh my! And the day came when I sat completely confused whom to cheer for. Germany’s two Polish players or Argentina’s coach, possibly a foreigner, someone who is not connected in any way to the inside circle of officials in the Polish soccer federation and who will play a player for what he represents. Many expected even more from the

coach, possibly a foreigner, someone who is not connected in any way to the inside circle of officials in the Polish soccer federation and who will play a player for what he represents. Many expected even more from the German team, but they still won and it counts. Flying Juergen Klinsman from California to coach the team, several times a month, is paying off now.

It’s getting hotter now, not just the weather, but the emotions are rising as well. Germany beat Argentina in penalty kicks, ouch! With Crespo out and (I can cheer for Lukas Podolski!) Italy beating Ukraine, who will become the champions? The Germans have to face the Italians, and Portugal will play against France. The shocking news that the last World Cup Champion Brazil was beat by France got a little note in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette’s sport section, on page …9. France is not the favorite country for many editors in any paper in the US so why inform the public about their accomplishments. From now on it will surely be the world’s best soccer.
And when there are only two teams left, everything freezes and one can only hope there are no power shortages.

I have to watch those games, how would I know about the Adidas commercial, the one where two Latino boys are picking teams. Each calls names of famous and some legendary players, and they all show up one after another Platini, Beckenbauer, Kahn, Beckham, Zidane, …
They play a game in this obscure courtyard where others are fixing a car and go on with their daily business. The ball bounces, at some point hits the hood of the car being repaired, and next one team scores. Little Jose and his friend are obviously the captains of their teams, and the legendary players… just play along. Suddenly this untidy woman appears on the balcony and yells in anger:
“Jose!”
The game stops, both the captains and all the legendary players look up,
“Que?” answers the boy squinting his eyes,
“A casa!”
And in soccer, just like in the Adidas commercial “Nothing is impossible.”