A few days of patience and a warm-up were the order of the day, and now the kick-off for the German team at the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand finally sounded. The opponent Morocco, the balance of power is clear, the result could well have been two or three goals higher, but who wanted to criticize a 6-0 start to an international tournament.
In the WM-Studio of the ZDF no one, on the contrary. With team captain Sven Voss as moderator, national player Giulia Gwinn, who had mutated into an expert due to injury, and all-round expert Kathrin Lehmann, the round was as well organized as it was prepared for the point. Gwinn, for example, countered any residual frustration about staying at home with an eye-catching dress. Anyone who was still used to the functional jackets of a Per Mertesacker from last year’s expert gallop might have had to rub their eyes a bit.
As far as the preliminary reporting is concerned, the preliminary skirmish was solid to convincing: a compact portrait of Felicitas Rauch, a bit of team knowledge from a zoological point of view and the universal insight into how best to proceed with the team formation: put the best on the best horse. Hü-hott, one would just like to say – and at the same time learn a little more about the personal playlist that Sven Voss unfortunately only hinted at – ZDF commentator Claudia Neumann and Co-Kraft take over. Almost anyway, before Sven Voss collects the tips from the experts, Kathrin Lehmann is rather cautious (2: 2), Giulia Gwinn, on the other hand, is extremely confident and with a 3-0 tip well on track, although in the end even three goals too low.
“A quantum of pressure” was announced by the ZDF voice Claudia Neumann, who harmonized perfectly with her colleague from the field, ex-national player Tabea Kemme, and in some scenes she had the traditional Neumann growl, that frog in her throat, an unmistakable indication of sufficient game drama. In terms of content, given the euphoria-inspiring events, things sometimes reached rhetorical limits. “There are hardly any slipped hands anymore,” Neumann exclaimed in view of the clearly improved basic performance of the goalkeeper women in general. The fact that referee Tori Penso keeps the place together so confidently is thanks to her role as a mother of three – “she knows how to deal with the young women here” – and of course it also had to be noted that left winger Klara Bühl crochet in her free time.
Crochet, the right keyword – when trying to describe Alexandra Popp’s “hardly physically possible goal” to make it 2-0 in words, Neumann/Kemme got entangled between “Popp-Ohr-Tor”, “Ohr-Katapult” and a few other neologisms in order to be able to agree on at least one statement that was as simple as it was true: “A nice goal, right?”
In terms of that, work in the studio was a lot more spectacular. Logically, it immediately turned to the head-ear-shoulder goal of “Poppi” and before you even talked about your head and collar verbally there, Kathrin Lehmann preferred to try the full physical effort, a kind of “goal enacting”, and put a kind of belly clapping in front of the amazed, speechless Gwinn and Voss to illustrate Alex Popp’s trajectory. The microphone flew, it rattled briefly, for a moment it looked like bruises, but there Kathrin Lehmann was already standing again and made any paramedic call obsolete.
“All criticism played against the wall and an exclamation mark set,” Guilia Gwinn summed up at the end of a refreshingly entertaining live broadcast. It’s good to continue like this. German fans will have to be patient again until the next group game. Next Sunday, July 30, they face Colombia in the second group game in Sydney (kick-off: 11.30am).
