Germany and football!

Germany winning the football world cup this week is the biggest source of joy for me personally. Reason being that I was in Germany during the first meeting of the same two teams, namely , Germany and Argentina , in the world cup final in 1986. I was a typical chennai girl at that time, with hardly any exposure to sports and least of all,  football. So during my stay when the world cup was underway, I could not understand the frenzy that surrounded the game there. It was funny for me to watch people glued to their tv sets whether it was in the office or at home. They spoke of nothing else than football at all times. With limited knowledge of the language then, I was not greatly influenced by their chats but then it was personally boring for me, since I neither understood the game, nor the football fever that grips the population there. I was totally ignorant of how great it is for a national team to qualify for the final until I had to step out on the day of the final and was on the road for about half an hour during the match time, and it was scary. There was not a single soul on the road for miles ahead and my friend who was driving the car was driving at top speed of 200km/hr to reach home to watch the match. I was petrified and for the first time, I realized how much this game meant to this European nation. Maybe all the European countries and even the south american countries are under the same intoxicating influence of this game.

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But I had first hand experience of seeing it, living with it, in Germany and it was sad that they lost the finals that time. Even a double championship in tennis (both Boris Becker and Steffi Graf won the singles titles that year) could not be a consolation for the citizens with that biggest loss in football.
After my stay in Germany, back home , I started watching football matches and especially during the world cups. Again 4 years later, these two teams were the finalists and this time , I understood the craze this game generates worldwide and was cheering wildly for my adopted country, Germany. They won and every world cup after that, I stopped watching the matches, once Germany lost and was never interested in any other country playing the game in the finals. I was becoming a crazy German fan while watching football and hence it was a sweet and memorable moment this time around where the country made me sit and watch them till the finals.
Kudoz Germany!