“Every place I go, there’s somebody from Trinidad,” Caligiuri told me. “They look at me and say, ‘I am Trinidadian.’ I just want them to win so I can get off parole.”
On the day of the match, I sat in Derek Marshall’s apartment in Flatbush and handed my cell phone to him and said, “Hey, it’s Paul Caligiuri.” The men in the apartment delightedly passed the phone around, and Caligiuri wished them luck, and the match began.
Early in the second half, Dwight Yorke, who once ran down David Beckham’s crosses for Manchester United, took a high, curving corner kick that connected with the head of Dennis Lawrence, who towered at six feet, seven inches tall, and the ball glanced past the Bahrain keeper. This time, T&T won the deciding match. In Derek Marshall’s apartment, I joined the cheer “Ger-ma-ny! Ger-ma-ny!”
Germany felt the same way about T&T. That most international city of Hamburg was the base for the Soca Warriors, who scheduled a friendly with St. Pauli, the counterculture lower-division team. On a sweet late spring afternoon, I squeezed into the St. Pauli stadium along with a lot of Germans and Trinidadian ex-pats. It was the kind of moment before a World Cup when spontaneous love for the sport is in the air, like an old Beatles love song from a few blocks over.
The good vibes did not last once the World Cup matches got under way. After T&T shocked Sweden in a 0–0 opening draw, several players claimed they heard Jack Warner—the very same Jack Warner who had printed more than ten thousand extra tickets in 1989—promise to issue bonuses. When T&T lost to England and Paraguay, the money did not materialize. The curse of Caligiuri was exorcised, but the curse of Warner was still in effect.
* * *
My wife and I loved strolling around Hamburg and walking down to the mighty Elbe, where so many Europeans had left for the New World. But this was not one of those World Cups where I could hunker down in one place. It was time to move on to Essen, the city of the Krupps, a short ride to Gelsenkirchen, the site of the first U.S. match.
I had an ulterior motive in choosing Essen.
As a child, I had never taken much interest in family roots—children rarely do—but now that my mother was gone, I regretted not knowing more about her Belgian Irish cousins, Florence and Leopold Duchene, whom she had known as a child. I knew the family had been caught harboring Scottish soldiers in Brussels during World War II, in their home on Rue Sans Souci, French for “Street Without Care.”
While investigating on the Internet, I had discovered photos of my aunt Florrie and learned that her name is chiseled on a monument to Belgian resisters in Ixelles, just outside Brussels. Gert de Prins, a historian with the Belgian Department of War Victims, wrote to me that my aunt had been sent with twenty other Belgian and Polish women to Ravensbrück and then to Mauthausen and on to Bergen-Belsen, where she died in April 1945, just short of her thirty-ninth birthday.
I also learned that Florrie’s trial had lasted from June 8 through June 11, 1943, in Essen. The aunt I had never met had once been in this city.
On the sixty-third anniversary of the start of her trial, we checked into a nice hotel across from the Essen railroad station and walked a few blocks to the Old Synagogue, now a Holocaust information center run by the government. The lobby contained photographs of the last worshippers in this building—youthful faces from the early 1930s who looked exactly like my classmates in Queens in the early 1950s. As I thought of our innocent flirtations, weekend subway outings to museums, bar mitzvahs, and ball games, tears began flowing.
I knew it was possible that I had Jewish ancestry through my father and his mysterious adoption. This World Cup was giving me a chance to visit a great contemporary nation that reminded me, perhaps more than any other country, of my own. A helpful government worker who spoke good English looked through a few ledgers and said that while the trial was held in Essen, my aunt technically was considered a prisoner of war, not a victim of the Holocaust, and therefore the trial records were stored in Düsseldorf. I knew I could not get there, not with the World Cup starting, so I paid homage to my aunt and all those children of the synagogue the only way I knew, with a highly personal column that expressed how I never could have been as brave as my mother’s family.
* * *
The real star of the German World Cup was the Deutsche Bahn. Coming from a nation that regards railroads as a socialist plot, I loved being able to scoot around a more compact country, using my rail pass and media credential to see a match almost every day; fans were scuttling around Germany the same way.
Check out this itinerary. (For every train ride, factor in one large juicy, spicy wurst on a roll with mustard and colorful, noisy crowds surging through the stations.)
Starting in Essen on June 10, I commuted down the line to Frankfurt to watch England beat Paraguay. The old hooligans were losing their steam. Only eighteen of them were arrested, mostly for drunkenness.
On June 12, I took the train north to Gelsenkirchen to witness the United States get waxed by the Czechs.
On June 14, I commuted to Dortmund for the Germany-Poland match. The Germans were not expected to be a factor, even as hosts, but the 4–2 opening victory over Costa Rica in Munich had touched off national sporting pride, chants, and flag waving that had felt psychologically verboten for six decades. Jürgen Klinsmann, the German coach, was often criticized for spending much of his time in that famous old German soccer hub, California am Pazifik, where his American wife and children lived. He had gone native, stunning his German players by actually talking to them. Was ist los?
At the Dortmund station, the driver of the media bus made a German joke. His vehicle was packed, no room for anybody else, but the schedule said departure time was still five minutes away. In English, the driver said: “I do something very un-German. We leave now.” To the sound of applause, this anarchist eased out of the space, sensibly delivering his full load to the stadium. Was ist los?
There had been rumors of Polish skinheads crossing the border to do battle with German skinheads in a forest; apparently, this is what skinheads do. The modern skills of law enforcement made sure nothing happened; Polish and German fans wore their respective jerseys in the old streets of Dortmund, and nobody fought. Was ist los?
One minute into extra time, David Odonkor lofted a perfect pass to a sliding Oliver Neuville, who nudged the ball into the net to defeat shorthanded Poland. Odonkor was the son of a German mother and Ghanaian father. Was ist los?
No skinheads materialized in Dortmund. No hooligans. No German-Polish truculence in sight. On the jammed train back to Essen, a father was standing with his weary son of five or six, both wearing the red of Poland. A young German fan stood up and offered his seat to the Polish father. People nodded in approval. Was ist los?
The railway journey continued as my wife and I moved down the line to Frankfurt, from where I made two day trips to Ramstein and Kaiserslautern for the U.S.-Italy match.
On June 20, we took the train to Cologne and visited the beautiful cathedral where a midday peace Mass was being held. Then I covered the Sweden-England match, a 2–2 draw with both teams already through to the second round.
On June 21, we took the train down to Nuremberg, where my wife scouted out a nice hotel alongside a park.
On June 22, the Americans played Ghana in Nuremberg, alongside Hitler’s old rally grounds, one of the rare times on this trip that I got the creeps from the past.
When the Americans were eliminated, I took the day train to Munich, where Germany eliminated Sweden, 2–0.
The next day, I was back in Nuremberg for a real stinker: Portugal 1, Netherlands 0, the ref losing control of two nasty squads, doling out sixteen yellow cards and a record four red cards; it was straight out of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: off with their heads!
On June 27, I was back in Dortmund. The Ghanaian players had looked forward to meeting their role models from across the ocean. Final score: Brazil 3, Ghana 0.
Teams disappeared like a blip on the radar, before I could ever se
e them. Also on June 27, Spain did what it often did—scored the first goal against France and then lost, 3–1. With all that talent, Spain still lacked the discipline, the belief in its own skill. Zidane had announced his retirement after the World Cup; now he seemed energized, a throwback to the lithe twenty-six-year-old dancer of the 1998 final.
On June 28, Marianne and I took the train from Nuremberg to Berlin, to a hotel in the Charlottenburg section. The hotel had a cigar club off the lobby, and the fumes seeped into our room, but rooms were hard to find, so we stayed. We loved the energy and youthfulness of emerging Berlin, but just to remind us of the recent past, a movie theater across the way had a huge advertisement for the current film, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), a gloomy memory of the eavesdropper state of East Germany.
* * *
Scandal hung over the World Cup. Gianluca Pessotto, the former Italian national player now serving as general manager of Juventus, had jumped out of a second-story window at team headquarters in Turin and survived. Pessotto’s despair was linked to an ongoing investigation of Italian soccer, with four teams, including Juventus, accused of influencing matches.
Luciano Moggi, the general manager of Juve, who had been so helpful during my Maradona mission when he was running Napoli in 1990, had been taped bargaining with league officials for friendly referees to work Juve matches; he once locked a referee in the changing room after a match because he was unhappy with the man’s work. Moggi’s five-year prison sentence was eventually reduced, and he did not have to serve time.
Thirteen of the twenty-two Italian players at the World Cup played for the four squads involved in the scandal—Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina, and Lazio.
Two of the key Juventus players—Gianluigi Buffon, the expressive keeper, and Fabio Cannavaro, the stocky defender—had been interviewed by authorities. Buffon admitted he had gambled on matches outside Italy until 2005 but insisted he had stopped betting when the Italian federation banned all gambling by players. Buffon was a great player and charismatic competitor, but let’s put it this way: the position any gambler would most like to influence is keeper.
Also, Massimo De Santis, who was supposed to have officiated in Germany, had his credential rescinded after his name came up as one of the friendly refs Juve chose for its matches. (Referees cannot work their own nation’s games in the World Cup.)
None of these charges shocked me after some of the strange calls I had seen in Serie A, such as the ref racing to the disk to let a Juve player take a penalty kick in the closing minutes.
Italian players seemed to thrive on turmoil. I had seen this in 1982, the year of Rossi’s comeback from suspension; and 1990, the year of Totò Schillaci; and 1994, the year of Baggio’s rescues. Never count out Italy in a World Cup.
On June 30, I took a fast train from Berlin to Hamburg, inhaled the heady air of the Elbe, and watched Italy annihilate Ukraine, 3–0.
Meanwhile, back in Berlin, Argentina took an early lead on Germany, but its coach, José Pékerman, took out his stylish playmaker Juan Riquelme, yet another example of coaches who do not value offensive players who can control the ball. Nine minutes later, Miroslav Klose scored on a header, and Germany won a shoot-out to reach the semifinals, as flags fluttered around this suddenly patriotic nation.
On July 1, I took the train down to Gelsenkirchen for the quarterfinal between underperformers—Portugal vs. England. Portugal had been a semifinalist only once, in 1966, the same year England won its only World Cup.
This was the match of the drama kings—Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, teammates at Manchester United for two seasons, one known for his flops, the other for his rages.
With his tinted tufts and supercilious smirk, Cristiano Ronaldo is the most annoying great player in captivity, but he is also a wonderful talent—big and mobile and selfish, the way an offensive star should be. He materializes out of nowhere to blast a header from high in the air, like Michael Jordan or LeBron James making a dunk. (He reminds me of Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees, a combination of ability and narcissism. In fact, has anybody ever seen Ronaldo and A-Rod together?)
The referee, Horacio Elizondo of Argentina, met the assorted dives and laments with a stern glare and upraised palm, or he just plain ignored the quivering bodies. When Ronaldo realized he could not sway Elizondo, he and his teammates worked at getting into the knotty head of Rooney. With the ref monitoring him at close range, Rooney gave Ronaldo a shove, and the poor lad hit the ground in apparent mortal pain. The ref brandished a red card at Rooney.
Rooney’s shove was a throwback to the petulant kick by Beckham in 1998 against Argentina and predated the cheap-shot knee in the back wielded by Chelsea’s captain, John Terry, in the 2012 Champions League semifinal. What makes English stars lose their cool?
After playing sixty-one scoreless minutes down a man, England predictably lost the shoot-out, which sent hundreds of English fans raging into the narrow lanes of the old coal and steel town. I slipped through the melee, found my nightly wurst in the station, and avoided the louts waiting for the overnight train to Berlin.
On July 2 at dawn, the train arrived at the modern glass terminal in Berlin. Sunday morning. Summer in the city. Cyclists were already hoisting their bikes onto the S-Bahn for a ride in the greenbelt. After a shower and a nap and some coffee, Marianne and I wandered around Berlin, checking out the architecture and the markers for the vanished Wall. Some strollers were wearing German jerseys. (How much did it cost for the fourteen letters of Schweinsteiger?)
My colleague Jeré Longman was covering Germany-Italy on Tuesday night in Dortmund, so I watched in my hotel room. For an American, it was like watching the future because everybody knew that one day Klinsmann would be working from his adopted home in California. Germans tended to believe that Klinsmann’s tactics were supplied by his assistant, Joachim Löw, known as Jogi. But Klinsi—his nickname made him sound like a wood sprite in a Grimm fairy tale—was more than a cheerleader. From his long career, he understood that strikers do not score on their own. He believed in the system. He was not exactly a new age hippie.
As the scoreless draw went on, Marcello Lippi clearly was not settling for another tiebreaker, not after Italy lost shoot-outs in three previous World Cups. He sent in three players with ball skills, including, in the 104th minute, Alessandro Del Piero, nicknamed Il Pinturicchio after the Renaissance painter. Lippi was going with artists. Bravo, maestro.
Italy cut it close. In the 119th minute, Pirlo gathered up a weak German clear and directed it sideways for Fabio Grosso, who curled a left-footed shot around Jens Lehmann’s dive. Lippi’s two other subs paid off during injury time, as Alberto Gilardino found Del Piero, who chipped in the second goal. Italy had responded to the gathering scandal by knocking off the host team.
Late at night in Berlin, I needed to write a column. I wandered out of the hotel and waited outside the Quasimodo Café on Kantstrasse—isn’t that wonderful, a street named for a philosopher?—until six people wearing Deutschland T-shirts emerged.
“The Italians played well,” one man told me, in English.
“Even though we lose, it’s a win,” another man said.
I asked how they were going to face this hour of loss.
“A curry!” they said, in unison, as they headed for the all-night stand near the Zoologischer Garten train station.
Their team had taken them a long way; the fans had not lost their appetite. There was no sense of that national devastation that I had felt in Spain, Mexico, Italy, and South Korea in past World Cups, when the home team was eliminated.
* * *
I had to sleep fast because on July 5 I caught a fast train from Berlin to Munich for the other semifinal, France against Portugal, the latter team making its first appearance in the semifinals.
This match turned on a fancy piece of footwork by Thierry Henry in the thirty-third minute. Henry was dribbling through traffic, and Ricardo Carvalho, the Portuguese defender and no angel, tried to po
ke it away, his left foot extended, easily within a kilometer or two of Henry’s ankle. Carvalho could see the injustice coming: as he fell backward, he waved his index finger at the referee, the classic European gesture that means No freaking way; don’t even think of it.
Too late. Henry artfully let himself get entangled with Carvalho’s outstretched leg and sold his dive to the referee, Jorge Larrionda of Uruguay.
Zidane took the penalty kick, impassively, going for the low left corner, evading the fingers of the Portuguese keeper, who had guessed correctly. That was all France needed for the 1–0 victory that sent it to the finals.
Zidane was conducting a seminar on how to go out on top. At the age of thirty-four, one championship behind him, he seemed like the coolest man on the planet. His penalty kick was a textbook example of how it should be done: Head down. No visible emotion. No elbows flapping. No knees knocking. Deliberate but not timid-looking. Just whack the ball into a corner.
I had memories of the 1998 final, when Zidane danced gracefully through the Brazilian defense; I could only assume he would go out dancing against Italy.
* * *
The World Cup is never separated from its setting. The Mexico World Cup of 1970 was held two years after the massacre of what may have been thousands of protestors at Tlatelolco just before the 1968 Olympics; the Argentina World Cup of 1978 was held as families of hundreds of desaparecidos (disappeared ones) staged protests in the plazas of Buenos Aires. The world remembers, bears witness, but, rightly or wrongly, does not stop the games, even after the massacre of the Israelis in Munich during the 1972 Olympics.
The past materialized for the 2006 World Cup final in Berlin, in Olympic Stadium, where Adolf Hitler had presided over the 1936 Summer Olympics and Jesse Owens had won four gold medals.
“The history is there, the totality of the buildings is there,” Gunter Gebauer, a sports sociologist, told BBC News in 2004. Gebauer added: “The whole Nazi landscape has not disappeared. There are towers like in a fortress, and people who come will always ask where the Führer sat.”
Eight World Cups Page 22