Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more more

GoetheInstitute

06/06/2006

Blood on the goal posts

If the Netherlands are to win the World Cup, they will have to be kept on bread and water. After all, it was the Dutch who coined the expression "Football is war". By Leon de Winter.

Swept up in World Cup fever the Folio magazine of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung commissioned a whole string of authors to elucidate on their respective teams' chances of victory. Read Rodrigo Fresan on Argentina, Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro on Brazil, Andrew Anthony on England, Herve Le Teiller on France and Robert Gernhardt on Germany. More to follow as the championship approaches...

Edgar Davids of the Netherlands, fighting a duel with Milan Baros, Czech Republic. Stupidly, I agreed to this invitation from the NZZ Folio. Now I'm supposed to explain why the Netherlands are going to win the World Cup, and to be honest, I have no idea how they could. We have fabulous football players with tremendous abilities but we have no national eleven. It might be that teams are born during tournaments and the strength of Dutch footballers is certainly their ability to develop team spirit in the relative isolation of the training camp. But winning the World Cup?

Not long ago I was looking at an old photo of the glorious Ajax Amsterdam team of the 1970s. Everyone of them looked like a killer. They all had legendary skills, but they also all had something extremely malevolent and revengeful about them; anyone who dared to take them on must fear for their lives. It was the Ajax trainer of the time Rinus Michel who coined the expression "football is war". His team looked like a death squad, trained in the wild forests of the Caucasus. These football players could survive anywhere because they could catch wild boar with their bare hands and rip them to shreds with their teeth. These men wanted to see blood spurting at the goal posts and wouldn't be able to relax until they'd quartered their opponents.

No, from me there will be no talk of the elegant game of football as a variation of ballet. For me football is a form of applied terror. I remember one Ajax game, where the opponents lay whimpering on the ground begging for forgiveness. But the word forgiveness did not feature in the dictionaries of the Ajax players, if they even had dictionaries. They would fight their way to the superior position, and with that achieved, the game could really get going: the opponents would be tormented, insulted, dismantled and banished to the psychoanalyst's couch for the rest of their days.

I confess to really enjoying the humiliations dealt out by Ajax. It was all about power and the eternal subjugation of the loser. Can our footballers today still humiliate others? How malicious and hungry do you have to be, to fight to the last breath, to be incapable of finding peace until the last drop of your opponent's blood has been sucked dry? Yes, I'm a fan of Chelsea and Barcleona too. They play beautiful football, but football is war, no, football has to be the ultimate thermo-nuclear eruption on a 110 x70 metre stretch of grass. And a football team has to be a killer commando of sadistic soldiers. From my mouth will come no criticism of the gladiators of ancient Rome.

What was it the NZZ Folio wanted from me? Why will the Netherlands win the World Cup? Because our coach Marco van Basten puts our players on bread and water. Because he shows them photos of their women running off with lithe Latin lovers. Because he holds photos under their noses showing their houses burning and their Maseratis and Lamborghinis being destroyed by vandals. And then he lets them out onto the pitch. That's why we'll be world champions.

*


Leon de Winter is a writer who lives in Amsterdam. His book "Place de la Bastille" (Diogenes 2005) was recently published in German.

This article forms part of compilation of writings originally published in the Neue Zürchner Zeitung magazine Folio on May 2, 2006.

Translation: lp.

Get the signandsight newsletter for regular updates on feature articles.
signandsight.com - let's talk european.

 
More articles

Me and my Kindle

Monday 6 December, 2010

TeaserPic Ebooks are becoming a serious alternative to their papery predecessors. Does this mean we are on the verge of a fundamental shift in the medium of the book and its contents? Author, retired German Literature professor and enthusiastic ebook convert Ruth Klüger leads the way into the almost weightless future of reading.
read more

Not in our name!

Monday 23 November, 2009

The path of gentrification has, more often than not, been paved by artists. But Hamburg's creative community wants to jam the economic development machine instead. Here is their manifesto.
read more

Organic or bust

Wednesday 24 January, 2008

The Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg is the playground of the new Germany. But unless you fit in, life can be tough among the beautiful creatives of a gated community that needs no wall. By Henning Sußebach
read more

I am a Goggomobil

Friday 18 May, 2007

Germans are said to be a bit obsessed with their cars - sleek, robust, fast. But the cutest thing to ever grace the autobahn had other virtues. In view of the green future where Germany is a small car nation, Georg Klein sings praise of the Goggomobil.
read more

Paris pop paradise

Wednesday 14 February, 2007

Paris is the anti-Berlin. While the world's writers and artists are flocking to the ugly German capital, personalities like Sofia Coppola and Jarvis Cocker are drawn to Paris to pursue their work in freedom and impeccable style in front of perfect facades. By Eckhart Nickel
read more

A perfect place for a revolution

Monday 20 November, 2006

"This year I was struck by the number of articles saying you should do absolutely nothing on your holidays. We Poles have fully embraced the credo 'time is money,' and become a nation of workaholics." Taking the experts at their word, Edwin Bendyk searches for perfect idleness in post-communist Poland.
read more

What to do with Mother?

Wednesday 1 November, 2006

Mother's friend E. can't move her hands. Mr W. scalded himself in the shower. Mrs A. fell down in the kitchen and Mrs H. was trapped among thorny roses. Perhaps it's time to get Mother to a safe place. In coming decades the number of over-80s will grow from three to ten million, more than one third of whom will need care. But where? And how? Susanne Mayer looks at why we are overtaxed when Mother or Father become care cases.
read more

"Nix Aldi - Picaldi"

Wednesday, 25 October 2006

The Berlin cut-price label Picaldi has cornered the jeans market for hoodies, dolies and rappers. By Johannes Gernert
read more

Bionade: the triumph of a guiltless pleasure

Wednesday, 18 October, 2006

There's no quenching German thirst for the organic lemonade in a Bionade bottle. The factory can't meet demand and has sent Coca Cola packing. Cornelius and Fabian Lange describe the rise of the Bionade empire out of the ashes of the failing Peter brewery in what was once a failing region in Germany - soon to be home to the Bionade valley.
read more

Always caviar

Thursday 7 September, 2006

Compared with their permatanned clientele, the chefs appear pale and lost in thought. The look of people who spend sleepless nights melding creative relationships between marinated Barbary duck and puff pastry with ginger. Margrit Sprecher on the annual pig-out in the mountains that is the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival.
read more

A St. Moritz pilgrimage

Monday 21 August, 2006

What is it that people find in St. Moritz, 1,856 metres above sea level? Is it the proximity of the sky? The snow, the cold, the peace, the pure air? Or is it a sense of their own impermanence? German novelist Thomas Hettche travels in the footsteps of Nietzsche and the jet set to Switzerland's exclusive resort.
read more

Patriots of a new stripe

Wednesday 28 June, 2006

Infected with World Cup fever, Germans seem to be swelling with a strange new feeling: patriotism. Writer Thomas Brussig admits that he too has been painting his face red, black and gold and reassures his compatriots that being proud to be German is healthy, good and by no means mandatory.
read more

Who will win the World Cup?

Wednesday14 June, 2006

Brazil is the obvious favourite. But what about the others? England has Wayne Rooney. Argentina is on a high wire between agony and ecstasy. The Netherlands will have to turn into a team of murderous sadists if they are to win. And Switzerland's card is the "principe melange". Eight writers rate their country's chances of victory.
read more

The return of the "principe melange"

Thursday 8 June, 2006

The FIFA World Cup kicks off tomorrow in Germany. In the last of our series by authors explaining why their country will win, Benno Maggi also tells exactly how Switzerland will become world champion.
read more

The Spanish Apocalypse

Wednesday 7 June, 2006

It will be an apocalyptic day when Spain wins the World Cup, says writer Guillem Martinez. But it might as well fall this year as any.
read more