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In four years the previous european champions have turned into a laughing stock. Peter Schimkat investigates the German malaise

Germany were neither the worst team at Euro 2000 (Denmark) nor the most boring one (Norway), though it has to be admitted that we ran both of them pretty close. What’s more, it was clear to everyone that this was not an isolated failure. Following the defeat by England, nobody gave a damn about that match. Everyone was far more interested in discussing what had gone so horribly wrong in the last couple of years.

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If Howard Wilkinson has his way, professional coaches in England will eventually have to obtain an official qualification. Bernd Huck explains how the system works in Germany

Karlheinz Riedle never wanted to be a coach. But when Mohamed Al-Fayed sacked Paul Bracewell and asked Riedle to take charge at Craven Cottage, he agreed to do the Fulham owner a favour. “But only for a short time, because I’m really not the coaching type.”

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After ten years of a united Berlin, Markus Hesselmann discovers that in football terms, Berlin still has an East and West feel

A pale young man with a strange haircut – short in front, very long at the back – and another in a hilarious star-spangled jersey made history with a handshake. On January 27, 1990, Olaf Seier, captain of 1FC Union from the GDR’s Oberliga, greeted Dirk Greiser, his counterpart at Hertha BSC, who were then playing in the Bundesliga’s second division. Two months after the Wall came down, 52,000 fans in the Olympic Stad­ium watched the first friendly between the two most popular Berlin teams. 

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Karsten Blaas explains why a proposed new citizenship law could have major repercussions for football in Germany, at both professional and amateur level

Last September, the Germans got themselves a new government. After a few months in charge, however, the envisaged red and green restructuring of the country turned out to be not much more than old Helmut Kohl with a few squirts of fresh paint. In fact, the only real reform likely to be passed in the near future is a modernisation of Germany’s citizenship law.

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Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger assesses whether Germany could stage the 2006 World Cup

Egidius Braun, head of the German FA, was beaming. Egidius is the undisputed world champion of jovial grinners, and so it wasn’t his smile as such that was irritating, but the occasion which brought it out.

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