With world watching, host nation has reinvented itself

	Michael Ballack (center) and the host nation have plenty to prove, but there isn't as much on the line for Germany as in years past.
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By Roger Cohen, Reprinted from SI Latino

In the vast universe of soccer, there are traditionally two opposing poles: Brazilian flair and German drive.

Both have been effective in their different ways, taking Brazil to an unsurpassed five World Cup titles and Germany, just behind them, to three. While Brazil, in the image of the outrageous skills of Garrincha and Pelé, mesmerized opponents, the German Mannschaft, marshaled by the likes of the imperious Franz Beckenbauer, wore them down.

But when the curtain rises Friday on the greatest footballing show on earth, host nation Germany will strive to present a different face. Out with dourness and discipline, in with a looser, more laid-back style. The World Cup's official motto is "A Time to Make Friends," and Germany, soothed by the fall of the Berlin Wall, is keen for the beer, babes and good times to flow. German employers have even suggested they will allow workers to take time off the job to watch games.

In the team's controversial manager, Jürgen Klinsmann, the country has found an apt emblem of this changed culture. Klinsmann, once a prolific goal scorer, lives much of the year in California, has an American wife, speaks four languages and is more artist by temperament than engineer.

All of this has earned him ridicule in German bars, where the consensus view is that the Mannschaft has gone soft in the hands of a cosmopolitan intellectual. The team's form, including a 4-1 drubbing by Italy in March, has scarcely inspired confidence. Even the captain, Michael Ballack, has conceded the possibility of "an early exit."

A national humiliation is possible, but Ballack, recently signed by England's money-oozing Chelsea, is a gifted player who can conjure goals from nothing. Jens Lehmann, preferred by Klinsmann as goalkeeper over stalwart Oliver Kahn, has shown remarkable form for his London club, Arsenal, and could provide the bedrock for a German resurgence.

Home turf is always an asset -- it helped West Germany to the title in 1974. Still, if this inexperienced German side goes all the way to the July 9 final in Berlin's Olympiastadion (completed by Hitler for the 1936 Summer Games and now refurbished for another age), it would amount to a shock.

The fact is the German soccer team no longer has the importance it once had for a nation that was desperately short of stirring symbols in the post-war years. Shamed and divided after 1945, Germans scarcely felt they could utter the word "pride" -- any display of national sentiment was shunned.

But there were two exceptions, achievements of which Germans felt they could boast without stirring new fears: the mighty Deutsche Mark, the currency that was the symbol of the German economic miracle before its replacement by the euro in 2002, and the Mannschaft that strode to World Cup victory in 1954, 1974 and 1990.

These West German teams had their stars, including one of the greatest goal poachers of all time, Gerd Müller, known as "Der Bomber," who scored an extraordinary 68 goals in 62 matches for the national team, and the elegant Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, whose astonishing acceleration often left opponents gaping.

But it was not such players, good as they were, who made the difference. It was the sheer, cohesive, palpable will to win of a side that seemed to carry within it the knowledge that it was the only legitimate post-war expression of German national power and prowess.

All that's changed since unification in 1990. Germans have nothing to prove now, or at least nothing as vital, on the football field. They're just another nation within the European family, with no walls, border angst or major ideological struggles. They sip cappuccino and take long vacations and enjoy Mediterranean beaches in the summer like everyone else. The Mannschaft is no more; it's become 11 guys in a German strip, talented and determined, but no longer driven and welded.

Which is not to say that politics or history have disappeared completely from the World Cup. Football is not only a sport, it's a potent political force. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an ardent soccer fan, has made clear that he intends to come to Germany to support his team, but a Holocaust denier on German soil is problematic.

In these days, the World Cup is also a potential terrorism target. AWACS surveillance planes will patrol the skies; chemical and biological warfare units will stand by. Fears of violence from racist thugs, who recently pounded an Ethiopian-German to the brink of death near Berlin, are also real. A match between the U.S. and Iran, technically possible in the semifinal stage, is a long shot. Still, if it happened, football would go nuclear.

But with any luck, Ronaldinho will samba and Germany will unwind and Latin rhythms will find a happy marriage with Bavarian oom-pah-pah. Stars will be born, dreams shattered and realized, and the beautiful game enriched once more with its share of myths and marvels to be carried forward to South Africa in 2010.

Roger Cohen is a columnist for the International Herald Tribune and is blogging from the World Cup. You can read all his entries here.

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