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New Folk Tradition Takes Root

Germans Go Crazy for Football Carnival

By David Crossland

In the old days, German fans would have reacted to a match like Monday's tepid 1-0 win over Austria by taking a relieved swig of beer and going to bed. Now they're putting on funny wigs and racing around town waving flags. The 2006 World Cup has spawned a new folk tradition: football carnival.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of German cities on Monday night draped in their national colors, whooping, cheering, hugging each other and honking their car horns to celebrate Germany's Euro 2008 win over Austria. But few can seriously have believed that their team either warranted that kind of reaction or has much chance of winning the next match.

Germany hauled itself into the knockout stage of the European Championship with a 1-0 victory over Austria -- which is placed 92nd in the world ranking -- on Monday night in a tepid performance that doesn't bode well for Germany's quarterfinal encounter against world-class Portugal on Thursday.

The only highlight, apart from a spectacular missed chance in front of an open goal by German striker Mario Gomez, was captain Michael Ballack's bullet-like free kick into the top-right-hand corner of the Austrian goal. The speed of the ball was measured at 120 kilometers an hour and the ball was struck so true that it didn't spin as it traveled.

"Ballack Blasts Our Fears Away" Berlin tabloid B.Z. splashed on its front page. But most commentators conceded that the German play in the last two matches has been too unimaginative and too tentative to pose much of a problem for Portugal.

"Do we have a chance against Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portuguese teammates with such a performance? No, definitely not!" wrote Franz Beckenbauer, who won the World Cup with Germany as a player in 1974 and coach in 1990, in the newspaper Bild. "Our team will have to raise its game significantly on Thursday to get to the semifinal. The German midfield lacked ideas, hardly came up with any moves."

The German team in its current form is reminiscent of England, which failed to qualify for Euro 2008 and has so often disappointed its fans with astoundingly poor performances at international tournaments.

Carnival Fever

Before the 2006 World Cup, Germans would have reacted to such a match by taking a relieved swig of beer, watching the post-match analysis with shaking heads and going to bed.

Now, they're donning silly wigs, draping the bonnets of their BMWs in German flags and racing through town at high speed chanting "Deutschland" into the early hours.

What has happened? The last World Cup in Germany appears to have spawned a new form of carnival, a football carnival.

The giant public viewing areas set up in 2006 turned watching football into a more collective experience than it was before. Added to that, four weeks of almost uninterrupted sunshine in 2006 helped to generate a euphoric party mood that Germany is determined to recreate now.

The carnival atmosphere has been completed by a new wave of football fancy dress consisting not just of team shirts but of black, red and gold feathery garlands worn around the neck along with face paint and funny glasses.

Another new element is that women are joining in with a previously unseen abandon. Before 2006, tournaments were accompanied by a spike in divorce rates and household violence caused by men's uninterrupted football watching. Suddenly, the sexes seem united in celebration.

Last Victory of the Tournament?

It's too soon to tell whether this new folk tradition is here to stay, but it's conceivable that this football carnival could return every two years for the World Cup and European Championship.

On the streets of Berlin, the celebrations themselves have turned into a competition, with the Germany fans trying to keep up with the unbridled jubilation of the city's more than 100,000-strong Turkish community over the last week.

Another similarity with carnival is that the gaiety seems a bit forced. Surely, getting to the quarter-final of a European championship cannot be such a huge deal in a country that has won that tournament and the World Cup three times each?

Does beating a footballing minnow like Austria really warrant screeching through town yelping and whooping while hanging precariously out of car windows? Or is it just a matter of keeping up with the Joneses?

But maybe Germans were right to celebrate Monday's victory, as it may well have been their last win of this tournament.

"Things will get really difficult in the quarterfinal," Günter Netzer, a former national team player, told ARD television on Monday night. "The performance shown so far will not be enough."