Simon Kuper
Apparently baffling events, such as England beating Germany 5-1 away, often turn out to be part of a logical pattern. What made the result seem particularly curious was that Germany had lost only one World Cup qualifying match before.
However, so had Brazil before 2000. This time they lost six, and the Dutch were eliminated.
A clue first dawned on me while eating a pig with a friend in an outdoor restaurant on the Sendlingerstrasse in Munich one lunchtime this June. I was working on a particularly tricky section of ribs when my friend noted that Mehmet Scholl had just walked past. “Amazing,” I thought, “a member of the Bayern Munich side that has just won the Champions League right here on this very street.” Then Jens Jeremies limped past (very badly dressed, incidentally).
It turned out that Bayern players practically march four-square down the Sendlingerstrasse every day, on their way to the surgery of the legendary doctor Roland Mller-Wohlfahrt. Jeremies and Scholl were among his most loyal customers, having played through injury to get Bayern to the Champions League. Neither was fit for the 1-5 in Munich.
Similarly, Brazil have struggled through the World Cup qualifiers without Ronaldo, who in 1997, his last full year of football, played 73 matches. This season is probably the busiest in football history. It is a global trend. Like the best bankers, lawyers and surgeons, the best footballers work ever longer hours. Inevitably the quality of their work suffers. Injuries are the least of it. The psychological burden is just as severe.
Since the growth of the Champions League, life for the best players has become an unrelenting series of highlights. Anyone who plays for club and country probably has a game scheduled on average every four days.
Brazilian internationals have it much harder. Not only must they play 18 World Cup qualifiers (on the principle of the more games, the more money) but they have to commute between Europe and South America to do so. In fact, it is a tribute to Brazil that they actually qualified for the World Cup.
Some players are wondering whether it is worth it. The main reason Holland got one point from two games against Ireland is that most Dutch players subconsciously didn’t want to go to the World Cup. They know these big tournaments: you spend five weeks locked in a camp watching foreign TV, go out on penalties, and then spend the next season exhausted and injured because you haven’t had a summer holiday.
Jaap Stam, who is only 29, told me he was considering retiring from international football because of the travel. Leeds have refused to sign any more South Africans because of the time lost on international travelling. The teams that have done best in World Cup qualifying are the mediocre ones, such as Paraguay, Sweden, Poland or Ireland.
Their players might not be very good, but they are fresh. Of the 14 Irishmen who beat Holland on September 1, only Roy Keane is playing in this year’s Champions League. Nor have many of them been to a World Cup. They are still really excited about it, like the Dutch were when they were eight years old.