Some only understand football, others make him unassailable: just like Youri Djorkaeff
Photo: Imago/Contrast
Isn’t the most honest hatred of self -hatred? There are certainly football clubs that I hate more than mine, be it RB Leipzig, PSG or Hoffenheim. But this hate flickers weakly against the feelings towards my own club; This is due to the impositions that this, my own club, imposed me.
The first man I loved was Pavel Kuka, the second Youri Djorkaeff. That was a happy and unfortunate choice in several ways. Most of the people who are familiar with football will guess which club my heart belongs: 1. FC Kaiserslautern. But to be honest, I am more of a ostracter admirer – all my heroes treated this club shitty. And worse: he always revealed the idea of football as I love him.
The worst clubs
FIFA is currently hosting the club World Cup in the USA. It is the next level of money bags in professional football. And a good occasion to think about the most overestimated football clubs in Loser episode.
Lautern stands for beer garnish football, male virtues, large-headed appearance, a certain Hoppla hier-community. It is all the more because the club was able to win the German championship-in 1998-with this kind of wide-legged Neanderthal football-as a climber! It is an association in which a clean, soothing turmoil is more than a tunnel. What – as on Schalke, for example – likes to be attributed to a certain rooting in the worker in the workers; Which is of course nonsense. Every workers’ team needs a magician at the front, and both those responsible and fans then decided for this Hütchen player Basler instead of Djorkaeff, one whose understanding of the game lies in the fact that he wins. At all costs.
I don’t just love my club, especially I love football. I like the principles he transports the idea he has. Above all, I like the beautiful game that, in its vulnerability, gives me a kind of transcendence that I would otherwise have to look for in religion. My favorite player ever is Ronaldinho. Elegance, wit, ingenuity, almost genius: he embodied more than all other players I saw my life (it may be that there were others who were older; like Stefano probably, perhaps also Matthias Sindelar).
So far have been published in this series:
Tumb is the hope (Schalke 04) by Alfons Huckebrink
Sorry, model boy (Arminia Bielefeld) by Fritz Tietz
Smooth as a Weseraal (Paris Saint-Germain) by Christian Klemm
When the child’s belief dies (FC Barcelona) by Frank Jöricke
I never loved Lautern because of his success – and never because of it because someone wins. I had a relationship with this creeping hedgehog, which was Kuka, and this strange clever racing meadow in midfield, which had more ideas than toes on the foot. Unlike the other heroes of that time – Kadlec, Schjønberg, Ratinho – they were strangely ineffective, but their touch was more provincial and their understanding of the game was less provincial.
To make it short: I like Olaf Marschall, but I love Youri Djorkaeff. One has understood football. The other has made football unassailable. And I hate the FCK for the fact that he doesn’t want to know anything about football; He just wants success. But for me it is like this: I have success myself, I would like to see football.