A World of Hope

„O.K., time for confessions, I’ve morphed into a German fan — and not just because the language has a word for pleasure in someone else’s pain. A German fan is something I never expected to be. Germany has become the country I could never settle in yet love most. It has played the most exciting football here, not least in demolishing Argentina 4-0, and made the most exciting political statement with its Benetton-ad team.

When you spend a lot of time in conflict zones where people won’t change, where they nurture grievance and make a fetish of difference, where they never exhaust a bloody past’s capacity to ignite violence, you become a sucker, an easy touch for change. I love Germany for changing in its own way, earnestly. I love it for becoming Europe’s ballast rather than its brute. I love it for facing the past rather than yielding to it. I love this Stuttgart-on-the-Med soccer school where Turkish flair meets the precision that yields the hermetic clunk of a German car door. I love the new Müller-Khedira sweet spot of athleticism and artistry.”