By Mike Woitalla, in Leipzig, Executive Editor
Soccer America Magazine
A supermodel, a magician, a pantless Lion and soccer-playing cows provided the entertainment at the 2006 World Cup draw in the former East Germany.
YOUÆLL FIND 140 STORES and restaurants in EuropeÆs largest train station, LeipzigÆs Hauptbahnhof. They include a McDonaldÆs on each level of the promenade. The golden arches, like the Subway Express, the Swatch Store and the Tabe Tai sushi bar, were not here when this was still Communist East Germany.
On the top level, near the 24 tracks and an information booth on World Cup travel and accommodations, is one of the big digital World Cup countdown clocks now omnipresent throughout Germany. It reads 182 days, 10 hours, 25 minutes – and the seconds tick away.
Outside the station, two fire trucks scream through Willy-Brandt-Platz. They have large World Cup 2006 logos on their sides. They veer south and will pass the St. Nicholas Church, site of the Monday Demonstrations that culminated on Oct. 9, 1989, in a march where 70,000 protested against the East German regime for 10 hours. It was described as the tremor before the eruption that took down a government whose secret police, the Stasi, was more extensive than the Gestapo or KGB. One month later, the Berlin Wall fell.
Franz Beckenbauer, the president of the World Cup 2006 Organizing Committee, explained why Leipzig was chosen to host the 2006 World Cup Draw:
''Leipzig and its people are the ultimate symbol of the peaceful reunification of Germany and a reminder that this World Cup will be hosted by all of Germany. We want to show the world that World Cup 2006 takes place in a different nation than the 1974 World Cup, which was hosted by the old [West German] Federal Republic in a divided Germany.''
The 1974 World Cup marked the only time that West and East Germany met on the soccer field. In Hamburg, East Germany pulled off a 1-0 upset. West German coach, Helmut Schoen, who had fled East Germany in the dead of night in 1950, nearly had a nervous breakdown. Beckenbauer, the captain, pulled the team together and led it to the title.
Germany was officially reunified on Oct. 3, 1990. Three months earlier, Beckenbauer coached West Germany to the World Cup title in Italy. At the press conference following the 1-0 win over Argentina, Beckenbauer, with a grin that may have indicated he was joking, said that he felt sorry for the rest of the countries because now that ''we will be able to incorporate all the great players from the east, the German team will be unbeatable for a long time to come.''
That, of course, would not be the case. Germany has won one title since reunification, the 1996 European Championship. But players from the former East Germany have made an impact. The 1996 title was won thanks largely to Mathias Sammer, a Dresden product. And the current national teamÆs only world-class field player, Michael Ballack, was raised in Saxony and was playing for FC Karl-Marx-Stadt when Germany was reunified.
EAST CLUBS STRUGGLE. The German soccer federation, the DFB, was founded in Leipzig in 1900, and GermanyÆs first national championship was won by VfB Leipzig three years later.
After the Allied powers split the nation – the Russian zone becoming the German Democratic Republic – West Germany formed the Bundesliga and East Germany the Oberliga, whose last champion was Hansa Rostock, in 1991, and included in its ranks American Paul Caligiuri.
When the leagues merged upon reunification, two East German teams, Rostock and Dynamo Dresden, joined the Bundesliga First Division, and six moved into the Second Division. (VfB Leipzig spent only one season in the Bundesliga, in 1993-94, and American John Doyle made seven appearances.)
The richer clubs from the west siphoned talent from the east and never did more than two teams from the east play in the Bundesliga. Last seasonnHansa Rostock was relegated – two seasons after Energie Cottbus, with American Gregg Berhalter, went down – and this season not one club from the former East Germany plays in the top tier.
The 45,000-seat Zentralstadion, which underwent $100 million of renovation, is home to Fourth Division FC Sachsen (known as Lokomotive Leipzig during its days in the Oberliga). The Zentralstadion, the only World Cup venue in the former East Germany, will host five games next summer.
USA FEARED. West Germany entered the 1974 World Cup an obvious favorite. It had finished runner-up in 1966, third in 1970, and boasted, besides libero Beckenbauer, the worldÆs top scorer, Gerd Mueller. It was reigning European champion.
Now itÆs a different story.
At the 2004 European Championship, Germany fell in the first round. It hasnÆt beaten a traditional power in five years and recently fell, 2-1, to Turkey, which didnÆt qualify for the finals.
So much has the soccer world changed that on the eve of the 2006 World Cup Draw the three-time world champion was hoping to avoid the USA, the strongest team in Pot 4, which included fellow CONCACAF nations Costa Rica and Trinidad & Tobago, and the four Asian nations.
Guenter Netzer, the great German midfielder of the 1970s and now a TV commentator, recalled the 2002 World Cup quarterfinal in which the Germans downed the Americans, 1-0. ''The Americans should have knocked Germany out of that World Cup,'' Netzer said as a young woman tapped him on the shoulder and told him he needed to go into the ARD booth. He was about to go on air. Netzer ignored her and continued, ''They were clearly the better team. They clearly had the better chances. They have great fighting spirit. They qualified easily. They keep getting better and better.''
The Germans had hoped for Trinidad & Tobago. But on the giant stage at the Leipziger Messe, when Lothar Mathaeus pulled a little ball out of Pot 4, it was Costa Rica that joined Group A. On live German television, Netzer was asked by his broadcast partner, Gerhard Delling, to comment on the Costa Ricans. Netzer shrugged and admitted he knew nothing about the Central American team.
The Welt am Sontag is the one paper that pointed out Costa Rica had twice beaten the Germans at a world championship ù at the U-20 level in 1995 and 1999.
Also in GermanyÆs group is Ecuador, which beat Argentina and Brazil in qualifying. But that was at home, 9,200 feet above sea level in Quito.
Poland is GermanyÆs fourth opponent, and the tabloid Bild am Sonntag announced with a front-page headline of two-inch-tall letters that Coach Pawel Janas has insulted ''us.'' ''Germany has no stars like before,'' Janas said. ''Only Ballack. And the Germans can feel lucky that they have [Lukas] Podolski and [Miroslav] Klose'' – two Polish-born players.
MAGIC, MUSIC AND MOOS. Asked later to describe his feelings as he waited to learn his teamÆs first-round opponents, U.S. boss Bruce Arena said, ''I had to go through entertainment for 70, 80 minutes that I could have done without, but thatÆs besides the point.''
German TV presenter Reinhold Beckmann and German supermodel Heidi Klum, who resides in New York and is married to British pop star Seal, hosted.
BeckenbauerÆs introduction came early on, but he kept the crowd waiting for a while because the door he was supposed to enter through had jammed.
Dutch magician Hans Klok made his bare-bellied assistants squeeze into boxes and made them disappear and reappear – again and again. He took a newspaper from a front-row spectator, ripped it apart, folded it up, then unfolded it whole.
Klok was an interesting choice of entertainment considering World Cup draws have long faced accusations of fixing match-ups with sleight of hand.
Colombian singer Juanes belted out his hit ''La Camisa Negra.'' World Cup mascot Goleo, a lion with a soccer jersey but no pants, pranced around stage, and another mascot, the talking soccer ball, Pille, cracked jokes that fell flat.
Pille and Goleo had been in better form during a pre-draw interview with the daily Express, in which Pille claimed he was related to Cher: ''Parts of her are made of the same material as I am.''
Goleo related that being World Cup mascots was exciting because, ''WeÆve met lots of legends – and also Lothar Mathaeus.''
An obvious aim of the gala was to portray Germans as light-hearted. A six-minute movie by ''Good bye, Lenin!'' director Wolfgang Becker provided the most delightful moments of the show, which was attended by 4,000 guests and viewed by more than 350 million on television in more than 140 countries, including Iran, where Klum was edited out of the broadcast because of her low cut dress.
The film, ''Ballero,'' to the tune of RavelÆs Bolero, included a soccer game between cows, a dribbling horse, a hockey player driving the puck into the net with a diving header, and a racket-less tennis player using his feet to ace an opponent.
Angela Merkel, GermanyÆs first female Chancellor and first from the former East Germany, sat in the crowd and lived up to her reputation as dour when she failed to wave or smile while her image was beamed from the big screens during her introduction.
Foreign media in attendance generally considered the event drawn-out and cheesy. Reviews from the German media were mainly positive, although the Welt am Sonntag compared KlumÆs high-pitched voice to David BeckhamÆs and predicted her performance wonÆt have launched a long career of emceeing.
When it finally came down to picking the teams – Pele and Cobi Jones were among those reaching into the pots – we got a draw that satisfied all of the seeded teams, except for Argentina, which got the Netherlands, and the Italians, who didnÆt appreciate landing with the Americans.
A Sky Italia television report accused Matthaeus of dropping the first ball he picked before grabbing the one with the USAÆs name in it, supposedly knowing which one to pick because of the orbÆs temperature.
''The Italians are mad if they think that,'' Matthaeus said. ''I had no idea which ball corresponded to which team. That is utter nonsense.''
The German press celebrated a ''Lucky Draw.'' 1974 world champion Paul Breitner said the host should thump Costa Rica 6-0 in the Munich opener on June 9 and outscore its three first-round opponents, 12-0.
Germany coach Juergen Klinsmann, who took the job in July 2004, said GermanyÆs draw could have been worse and that: ''We donÆt want to underestimate anyone, but we have a good feeling.''
(This article originally appeared in the January 2006 issue of Soccer America Magazine.)