Text: Olaf Jansen

Bad Days in Druskininkai

Lithuania 2018 – the tournament in tranquil Druskininkai was as lovely as ever. In purely sporting terms, however, it was a huge challenge for Team Germany. The first shock came at departure from Dortmund airport: striker Bernd Huck arrived on time, but had once again grown a year older since 2017. By kick-off almost 18 hours later, the team – heavily refreshed the night before – had to absorb a number of further psychological blows. Restless rooms on the hotel’s ground floor, no eggs left at breakfast, the journey there with the widely travelled, singing Egyptians. And then: 20 degrees and sunshine at the venue. No “Fritz Walter weather” – the rain in which Germany’s 1954 hero thrived. Disadvantage Germany. On top of that, the harsh truth: the shirts we had brought were old and ugly.

No team can simply shrug off such hardships. Winning gets harder and harder. Especially as, year after year, the opposition resorts to unfair means to beat Team G. Like the Egyptians in the opening match, who put Cologne/Dortmund under enormous pressure with ugly running and won 1–0. Completely deserved, by the way. Nothing works, hardly anything goes right. Even Captain Ralf Klemm has to sit down with a bad calf after only eight matches. By then the Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians and all the rest have already swept over the brave Germans like berserkers. Germany: zero points. Until, yes, until the Armenians thought they could win with one hand tied behind their back … Ha ha, in the end it was 1–1, and they could be glad of that. Likewise the overconfident Belarusians straight afterwards, who also had to pay tribute to the midday peak of the formidable German defence. Again: 1–1. Go, Team Germany, go!

Well, then came the thing with Klemm’s calf, rising heat, falling heat, a misplaced-pass rate climbing to 96 per cent, and pain setting in – in the groin as well as the psyche. The air had gone out of us. 9 matches. 7 defeats. 2 draws. Last. And at the evening deer dinner, the small, wiry Ukrainian striker, who said with a gentle smile that never before in his long career had he seen such a hopeless team that nevertheless stayed so fair despite total defeat. We have already made a careful note of him for the first bloody tackle in 2019.

The journey home went smoothly.