German penalty kicks not what they used to be
By: Philipp Sandmann
Tags: Penalty, Germany, Football, Pandemic, Corona

Germans and successful penalty kicks used to be a fairly safe bet. But things have changed. Not only in football, but also with regards to Germany being an efficient and future oriented country. The pandemic has exposed our deeply bureaucratic approach to things.

Identity in Germany is not an easy subject. But in order to understand how ‘Germanness’ is perceived in other countries, one should travel abroad. Even better: live abroad, outside of Germany, for a couple of years. I had the chance to live in the United Kingdom for six years — pre Brexit that is…

Can a German miss a penalty?

Being German and living in the UK can mean — when talking about football — that one is faced with a deep respect, but also a sense of expectation, for your ability of taking a penalty kick. Having played for the university football team of my London university, I certainly felt a pressure whenever walking up to the penalty spot. ‘Can a German miss a penalty?’, my English colleagues will have most likely contemplated in that moment. The few penalties I took, I did actually score. Thank god. I can say with a certain sense of pride: I kept that idea of the German clinical penalty taker alive (being the only German in my team at the time). Angela Merkel can thank me later.

But there is also something else that one understands about Germanness when living abroad. Germans are respected for their efficiency. Whilst the world still waits, Germans have already done it. They build great cars. They build fantastic machines. They have modern airports. They export high quality goods to the rest of the world. And might I add: They also bake great bread. My British friends weren’t shy about telling me what they respected about Germany at the time. And they were probably right. Well, maybe not about the airport part: Travelling to Berlin via plane before the ‘new’ airport BER had opened with almost a decade delay, was very East Germany. Nostalgia included.

But unfortunately, things have changed for the worse. Fundamentally. Not only has German penalty taking become less accurate, but also the other typically German traits have begun to crumble. The problem is: Many politicians in Germany haven’t yet realized.

Where is our ‘Hemdsärmeligkeit’?

The Corona pandemic has exposed the dire state of our public administration, schools and hospitals. It has shown that Germany is not a progressive and modern country, but a country that is — in large parts — run by bureaucrats. It is a country that lacks the so-called ‘Hemdsärmeligkeit’, which translates to a practical and goal-oriented approach to problem solving. The liberal politician Hermann Otto Solms (80 years old), who had to wait several months for his first Corona vaccination, told me in an interview, what answer he became, when he inquired, why it wasn’t possible to get an appointment for a vaccination: ‘Nobody felt responsible. That is a typical answer in a bureaucratic state, where responsibility is always passed on.’

And Solms is right. The pandemic has shown that Germany is far from being practical and goal-oriented. People with a prior history of diseases have been rejected at vaccination centres because their paperwork had allegedly not been in order. Some of our laboratories still use fax machines to transmit Covid-19 test results to the local health authorities. And our apprximately 400 local health authorities still haven’t managed to install a standardized software for contact tracing. A politician of the Christian Democrats tried to criticise the slow progress in this matter and said cynically: ‘Nigeria says hi’. What the politician didn’t know at the time: Nigeria is miles ahead of Germany when it comes to the digital combat against pandemics.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU)

Angela Merkel and her party, the Christian Democrats, are only now realizing that their lack of investment in digital infrastructure (but also real infrastructure) is coming to haunt them. Looking at current opinion polls, a new government in September without the CDU in charge seems realistic. And maybe it is even necessary to some extent.

The art of German penalty taking can be restored, I have no doubt. But in order for Germany to get back to that perception of being efficient and miles ahead, it could take decades. In the imminent future, Germany will only be second best for a while. I hope that at least our bread baking skills will remain of a high standard.