It was a cool performance, only the thing with the cover song by U2 should have been left out. That’s what it said in a concert review in the mid-90s about a gig by our band The Empire Freak Shop in the Traumfabrik in Kiel. Delivered clean, only “One” was somehow too much. A conclusion that, in principle, could also be drawn with a view to the football afternoon on ARD: Everything is okay, except for “One”. Of course, the song by U2 is obvious, although with a view to the armband lyrics, it only tells half the story. Actually, Bob Marley’s “One Love” would have been the, um, more authoritative choice.
Be that as it may, the U2 fans are probably in the majority in the ARD editorial team. A kind of acoustic version was used, and even before the game started, it felt as if Bono and his band had come to comfort the audience full of foreboding. No departure, no euphoria, instead the Irish pop preacher, as if you had already known which result would be on the scoreboard after a lazy 98 minutes. The fact that the team’s substitute protest pose, hashtag ban on speech, with the hand in front of the mouth looked just as good for the moment afterwards – yikes, that probably went wrong! – also an unwanted, somewhat tragic punchline.
When the German national soccer team kicked off the World Cup with the game against Japan, ARD took over for the first time and presented itself in solid early form from the start – which took place at around 10 a.m. with the preliminary reporting on Croatia against Tunisia. Expert Thomas Broich in a black turtleneck looked like he would play with a Beatles cover band at the Cavern Club in his free time. Julia Graf offered the calm counterpart. The two had it comparatively well, the collective pulse of the studio quartet in the subsequent Germany game was higher from the start.
Thomas Hitzlsperger was immediately furious about the (football) political situation surrounding the tournament in Qatar, Almuth Schult promised at least a little more “World Cup mood”, while Sami Kheidira accused the associations of taking the entire problem lightly to have. A sentence about the interior design of this group of experts: The arrangement with a wide desk comes across as a bit more pleasant than the bench at ZDF, which invites you to mansplain with your legs wide open.
Given the overall situation, however, these are just subtleties. Anyone who saw Olli Bierhoff in the interview before the game had to realize by now at the latest: Even the former “Head
A word about Schweinsteiger: he seemed to have a better blood supply alongside Esther Sedlaczek than alongside Jessy Wellmer, who again cut a much better figure in the studio this time.
In between, Tom Bartels was almost 100 minutes of play as a commentator on the microphone, he also gave his part almost calmly and solidly, whereby: In the middle of the parade hail of the great Japan keeper Gonda, to dismiss the one (not caught) ball as “poorly held”, that was almost an art form of its own.
In the end, paralyzing horror in the assembled team and the realization that there isn’t an answer for everything. Jessy Wellmer wanted to know why we lost. Hitz, the Hammer, then: “That’s a good question”.
On Sunday we continue against Spain, at the latest by then U2 should also have served their time. With a view to the false start, the question now arises as to what the round of 16 will look like: With … or without you, Germany?
