Through Munich gloom, you can tell: the greatest show’s back

Terror threats, a possible Ahmedinejad visit, English hooliganism: they are all keeping organisers busy in the countdown to June 9

The World Cup is still four days away, so let’s talk about the weather. Munich—indeed, the whole of Germany— is in the grip of an unusually cold spell, a “mild winter”, as one local said. The clear skies for much of the flight out of Delhi gave way to increasingly dark cloud cover once you crossed the Caspian, the mid-afternoon temperature in downtown Munich was 14 degrees and there’s even talk of snow some time over the next month.

These are conditions to test even the fabled German organisational skills, which anyway has to deal with a complicated system of venues where each team plays its three group matches in three different cities. Brazil, for example, play in Berlin, Munich and Dortmund, the three geographic extremes—and you thought our cricketers had a hard time touring!

Yet if German officials are sweating, it’s because of the real threat of violence to the world’s most watched sporting event. The National Information and Cooperation Centre, which sounds like a Gandhian study group, is actually the the hub of the security operations for the World Cup, located in the bowels of the Interior Ministry in Berlin. It works 24X7, reportedly gathering 1,000 pieces of information every day.

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Every little bit will help. Though Germany didn’t send troops to Iraq, and has been relatively warm towards Iran (which brings with it its own complications of how to deal with a possible Ahmedinajad visit), there is no shortage of targets. One example: the south-western town of Kaiserslautern, home to a large US military base—and venue of the US-Italy match.

This is, of course, Munich, a city whose top-of-the-mind sporting connotation will be the massacre at the 1972 Olympics—brought back to prime mindspace last year by Steven Spielberg. And so the prime task for security officials will be to balance any natural instinct to be heavy-handed, perhaps justifiably so, with the awareness that the theme of this tournament is friendship.

Try telling that to the hooligans, who will certainly not make things any easier. Football’s traditional black sheep were kept away from the last World Cup by distance and the reputation of East Asian police operations. Germany is a short ferry ride, a shorter drive, from England, Holland and Italy, the traditional hooligan centres, and Poland, the new kid on the block.

Yet it is almost certain that, four days from now, football will break through the gloom, transcend these petty human problems. The footballers will “mak show”, as The Beatles were exhorted to do every night while building their reputation 45 years ago on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn. There is enough to look forward to: Messi’s prodigious talent, Brazil impossibly gifted squad, the five debutant countries—the most at a World Cup in a long while.

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For now, though, all eyes are on Germany whose footballers have, for the last 16 years, been bowed down by the achievements of their predecessors. Not much is expected of them this time, certainly not a repeat of their overachievement the last time around, though in Lukas Podolski they have a star in the making. German fans don’t appear to have the enthusiasm of the home fans at the last World Cup, and the prohibitive ticket prices haven’t helped.

Germany’s first opponents will be Costa Rica, known as the “Brazil of Central America” (the real Brazil begin their campaign next Tuesday). They have figured out a strategy to get through to the knockout stage, so expect them to play their passing, dribbling game.

The “weltmannschaft”, as they call the World Cup, is here. Over the next few days, Germany will welcome the genuine fans at airports spruced up to a level even the hosts would be proud of. Time now to Mak Show.

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