Ich werde ein Berliner

With the World Cup upon us, it’s about time you learn how to use the coming four weeks of football and partying to receive the maximum possible attention and affection from elite German people.

Remember: Your declared mission objective is to be accepted into the very inner sanctum of elite Germany, so you won’t have much success acting like a typical football nut. Although the tens of thousands of impeccably unique, improbably brilliant, and undisputedly creative artists and intellectuals in and around your city’s alternative Altbau quarters love to playfully associate themselves with the working class in self-important dive-bar small talk, they’d rather eat a battery chicken’s egg than share a single interest with the proles.

Elite German people just can’t bring themselves to be into football the same way normal people are. It’s easy to see why. They’d have to deal with people who are different from them: Football fans.

Aren’t they disgusting, with their genuinely enthusiastic, irony-free approach to football? Just look at them in their stupid wigs and jerseys, faces unabashedly painted in their own countries’ colors, getting drunk on mainstream beer brands, and cheering their team on without the slightest sign of ironic self-awareness.

Then there’s the players. More often than not, they too are inarticulate brutes with Guido haircuts, obscene, gas-guzzling sports cars, and wives and girlfriends that are the exact opposite of the universally accepted gold standard of elite German femininity, i.e. confused, dark-haired girls: The frisky blonde babe. I mean, come on…how could you ever idolize someone who prefers Gucci over American Apparel and would never make the Berghain door?

Most importantly, though, they are opposed to the commercialization of football. Elite German people are very good at telling the exact point in time somebody or something has sold out, which means it has become popular with the wrong type of German people to a degree that flaunting it ceases to give them that sweet feeling of superiority and importance. Whenever an elite German person starts into another heated rant about how football has become a multi million Euro business run by faceless banker-types, and how this has destroyed the true spirit of the game, make sure to nod in perfect agreement, as if you were admiring their politically correct assessment of the evils of capitalism, though the real opinion forming in your head is probably more along the lines of: “Just look at this bitter little man’s mouth open and close!”

Modern football, and especially the World Cup, poses a problem for elite German people. The way FIFA has sold out the World Cup to evil, multi-national corporations is an insult to their intellectuality and something they must always keep a critical distance to, yet they sense that standing around with a frown while everyone else is partying would give away the fact that they aren’t the easy-going, free-spirited hedonists they always claim to be.

Elite German people solved this problem their way: By overemphasizing certain other, nonessential aspects of football, they created a complex hierarchical system to assess another person’s interestingness, much like they did with popular music. They named this system football culture. Finally, elite German people gained a way to show how far above of those football-crazy, drooling simpletons they really are. Suddenly, football became a very acceptable topic to impress other elite German people with in nasally spoken, vapid party conversation.

It didn’t take them long to turn the straight and simple game of football into another nerdy gimmick to deck up their alternative image with. Thanks to elite German football fans and their bible 11 Freunde, the perfect football magazine for people who hate football, it isn’t sufficient anymore to just know the results of the past match day. No, this new breed of hipster football connoisseurs won’t shut up until they’ve overanalyzed each and every aspect, however minor, tiring, or gossip-y it might be, in endless pseudo-intellectual ramblings so boring they’d make virgin philatelists at a Finnish Trekkie convention roll their eyes. It is the elite German people’s very personal little revenge for being ridiculed as overweight, mollycoddled four-eyes who were always getting picked last in gym class.

When you talk football to a bunch of elite German people, make sure to spare them lame and boring topics like scores or strategy talk. To convince them you’re an interesting individualist, keep the focus on quirky, leftfield topics that revolve about all those hip little things your thick-rimmed glasses wearing friends care about. Topics like:

• “Have you seen that awfully tacky haircut on Hertha’s Marco Pantelic? He still sports a mullet! I am so glad he has left Bundesliga for good. If Union ever buy a player with a haircut that tacky, I’ll have to look for another team to support!”
• “We should set up a website that lets people vote which player has the best taste in music! I think it’s really important to know which music each team member likes. Imagine you start to like a certain player and later you find out he listens to Katie Melua!”
• “The World Cup? Big friggin’ deal…to a true football connoisseur like me, there’s little of interest happening at that over-commercialized, corporate event. Did you know the truly exciting football is played in the minor leagues? The spirit and sense of unity there really is unmatched. If you like, I will take you with me to the next match of my favorite team, FC Auf-Gehts-Konsteinburger. They play every Sunday on this totally cool, abandoned GDR factory lot near Ostkreuz. Chills man, chills!”
• “I love how intellectual Paul Breitner looked in the 70s. He had this ubercool afro and I heard he even read Mao’s theories. It really was the golden age of football, before the bankers and lawyers took over! And they had these great, retro-looking jerseys. I’d wear those to Panorama Bar in a second!”

Next, you should choose a team you are going to pretentiously associate yourself with. To elite German people, supporting Germany is just one of a number of options, often the least attractive one. To show everybody how special and cosmopolitan you are, you should repeatedly announce your support for a foreign country. Which one you choose depends on what image you like to portray to your elite German friends. Here are a few popular choices:

England: Elite German people love English football and often confirm to each other how fast and more exciting the Premier League is compared to backwards Bundesliga. German intellectuals love the idea that pretentious support for an English team will magically supply them with that much desired working-class air. Use this to your advantage. Tell them how you miss getting down to Anfield Road to chant “You’ll never walk alone” with some really ace chaps from Liverpool. Rooting for England may not be the most original thing you can do, but it is a safe way to gain respect as a true expert on the history of football. A quick word of advise: You should have a backup team ready from the quarter finals onward, in the unlikely case England gets eliminated early.

• Brazil: The traditional go-to country for any elite German person who thinks they’re clever. Rooting for Brazil means rooting for beautiful, winning football, and, more importantly, for not offending anyone. Every elite German person loves Brazil for its easy-going way of life, ethnic musical styles that sound great in lounge-y bars, and poor people who, despite being poor, smile and laugh a lot. Choose Brazil and you’ll be seen as a relaxed, fun-loving person, and if Brazil gets eliminated at least you’ll have everyones pity.
• France: France’s status for the 2010 World Cup is a bit of a mystery. It used to be the intellectual’s choice, who, in their skewed minds, thought they could impress thick-rimmed glasses wearing girls in bars if they self-importantly talked about how they think Zinedine Zidane is the most complete footballer of our time. Since that guy ended his career, and Les Bleues are a bit hard to evaluate, it is a gamble to support France. Still recommended if you’re an androgynous person who loves to wear black turtlenecks and smoke filterless cigarettes while discussing dialogue-heavy movies from the 60s starring Alain Delon.
• Turkey: Rooting for Turkey will give you an instant morale boost. An elite German person rooting for Turkey will be seen as an ambassador of good will, someone who is clever and mature enough to not get involved in silly patriotism over a football match, but rather use the occasion to improve Germany’s relationship with its minorities. If you root for Turkey, don’t expect those Turkish guys celebrating down the street to give much of a shit about your noble ambitions, though. Think of it as a good deed that will mainly serve to make yourself feel superior to your peers. Don’t let the negligible fact that Turkey this time didn’t even qualify for the finals hold you back (thanks, Matt).
• North Korea: The North Korean team is the FC St.Pauli of the 2010 World Cup. The ultimate underdog. It goes without saying that associating yourself with this team will instantly make you a better person with built-in moral high grounds because everybody will feel bad making fun of you and your team will likely be sentenced to death unless they bring home the World Cup. As a convenient side effect, by rooting for North Korea you make a bold statement against US imperialism and pro mild stalinism, a concept the intellectual elite of Berlin has never fully written off. That, and you get to wear the most ironically fashionable jersey of this World Cup.
• Germany: Supporting Germany in Germany is a difficult move only recommended for true masters of irony. Get a tiny detail wrong and you’ll see yourself categorized as the wrong type of Auslander, a label that is very hard to get rid off. If done right though, elite German people will line up to applaud you for taking a wildly interesting, down-to-earth stance against the pretentious, try-too-hard Germans who childishly support a foreign country. Say something like “well, I was so fed up with everybody rooting for other countries, so even if I am not a real fan of Germany’s team, from now on I’ll cheer them on to spite the hipster idiots!” German people will think of you as a postmodern genius and take turns to pay for your cheap, ironic beer in the coming four weeks.