The Adidas World of Football
A view of the tent stadium
Football fans passing the X-box tent
There were a lot of mini-football fields set up for fans to play on and an X-box tent for those better with their thumbs than their feet.
A match in front of the Reichstag
Mateo, Rainer’s Italian colleague, thought that it was disrespectful to have football fields and a tent stadium set up directly in front of German Parliament, but Rainer says it’s the house of the people and football is the sport of the people. I guess Berlin forbid playing football in the plaza in front of the Reichstag, and set up barriers, but then Parliament voted to allow it.
Deserved?
Rainer thinks that the USA team is cheating in taking the stars from our flag and putting them on our shield. Normally, for other countries, the stars represent the number of World Cups the national team has won, so England have one star, Germany and Italy have 3, Brazil has 5, etc. I suppose I would have to agree with him in this regard. Who designed the symbol anyway? Didn’t they know what the stars signify?
A German came up to us and offered to trade something German for this hat. Then I told him we bought it here in Germany. It was easy to tell that the only thing US-related to buy in the Fan Fest were super-sized US flags because it looked like every US fan in the area was wearing one (including me).
Inside the tent stadium
It was a very exciting game from start to finish (well, Mateo said it was a bad game, but he’s Italian). This was the US team I had hoped to see at the first match of the Cup. Now if we beat Ghana, we will advance to the second round and most likely play Brazil. I feel conflicted about the USA v. Ghana match. I want the USA to make it, but I like the idea of the underdog African team making it to the second round too. And maybe they are more deserving (as a country) of getting through than we are. Hmpf…
