More than a quarter of a billion people play football, even more watch football. If Germany’s national team plays a tournament, public viewing of the game becomes the campfire of the nation. Worldwide, football can create national joy or great despair. A tournament can become a fairy tale („Sommermärchen“), an important victory can be like opium, a Messi can become a Messiah.

On Sunday July 13th 2014, every seventh mortal, adding to more than a billion, regardless of the time zone, did the same thing, in Hong Kong, in villages high up in the Himalays, in the cauldron of Rio’s Maracaná (like me),next to icebergs in Greenland, in the deserts of Africa or on an atoll in the South Seas: They were watching the world cup final between Argentina and Germany. Football’s popularity seems hard to believe since there is always the same challenge. As French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre put it: In a football match everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.