In Sopot on the Polish Baltic Sea beach it was raining incessantly when the German national team lived there during the 2012 European Championship. The “great charisma” with which Angela Merkel filled the team hotel called Olivenhof with her visit was all the more welcome. The gallant compliment came from the substitute goalkeeper and gentleman Tim Wiese, who played a key role in the regular visits by the head of government at the time: he traditionally gave the guest speech at the farewell. Once it happened that Angela Merkel looked in vain for him when she came to the dressing room after an international match to say a few words to the team. “I won’t start without a meadow,” she said.
Angela Merkel acted as a kind of patron of the national team in those years. They got closer during the 2006 World Cup, at the end of the tournament Merkel and the team were sitting on the roof of the Berlin Chancellery over chicken and beer, and Oliver Bierhoff raved about a party at which there was “no protocol”. In fact, over time, the encounters between the top from politics and football became more and more casual, at first the players tied their ties well, later they just kept their tracksuits on, as can be seen in the photo from the visit to the olive farm: Merkel wears costume, table gentlemen Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Miroslav Klose three stripes. The famous picture of another summit meeting, however, caused offense: less because Mesut Özil was only half dressed when he shook hands with Merkel in 2010 after a 3-0 win against Turkey. But because the then DFB President Theo Zwanziger did not know anything about the photo session and was not allowed into the cabin when he finally rushed over. An official protest note followed. Maybe he would have liked to be in the picture.
The photo with Özil was celebrated as a message of integration, the photo that Turkish President Erdogan had taken with Özil eight years later as its opposite. At the latest here the ease with which the liaison between Merkel, Jogi Löw and his team had started ended. It was a relationship that both sides liked and benefited from, the government and the DFB. Real sympathies developed behind the staging to increase the popularity values. On the occasion of Angela Merkel’s departure from office, some of her old companions have now reminded of this. Sami Khedira and Jérôme Boateng wrote solemn words of praise, and Bastian Schweinsteiger suggested that Germany would “still miss” Merkel. Maybe we’ll see each other again “next year for a ginger tea,” he wrote. Then again without Theo Zwanziger.