THE vague memories of studying German for ‘O’ Level weren’t required for me to understand one phrase uttered by Germany left-back David Raum in the post-match mixed zone.
‘Kick and rush’, those very words spoken in English, encapsulated a very German arrogance about the game that had finished just moments earlier.
When you’ve won the game thanks a fluky goal from a corner kick, the ball flying in off your giant centre-forward’s shoulder, then you’re really in no position to stand up on a podium and pontificate about how the game should be played.
Woltemade’s (centre right) goal made the difference on Monday night (Liam McBurney/PA)
When your manager makes two more substitutions during the frankly farcically short two minutes of added time, and one of the players coming on wrestles with the opposition centre-forward, then you don’t represent pure football.
When you come from a nation of 84m people, taking on opponents drawing from around 2m – many of whom don’t choose to play for your team, or prefer other sports – then you should show some humility after scraping a 1-0 win.
When you have players from Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen, and RB Leipzig, compared to opponents from Sunderland, Swansea, Southampton, Stevenage, and San Diego then you should wind your neck in.
Serge Gnabry opened the scoring for Germany (Martin Meissner/AP) (Martin Meissner/AP)
When you only force the opposition goalkeeper into one save, and only create one ‘big chance’, then perhaps don’t pretend that you were playing ‘beautiful football’.
When your manager whines about long balls in the first game, even though his team played plenty of them too, then doesn’t even have the courage of his convictions and backtracks on those comments when he comes to Belfast, maybe you should have just said: ‘We were lucky enough to win’.
To be fair to Raum, he had high praise for the atmosphere created by the home support.
However, he offered no credit to a Northern Ireland team which played the ball out of defence on as high a percentage of occasions as the Germans.
Northern Ireland’s players form a huddle before hosting Germany.
Photo by David Maginnis/Pacemaker Press (Photo by David Maginnis/Pacemaker Press)
Of course Germany had more of the ball; they have better players.
But as well as testing the German defence with longer deliveries the home team carved out shooting chances with neat passing.
‘Kick and rush’ it was not.
Even worse than being a sore loser – yeah, yeah… – is to be an ungracious winner.
None of this is to argue that Northern Ireland ‘deserved’ a draw.
You have to take your chances in sport: the hosts only created half-chances at best and none of their efforts were good enough to beat German goalkeeper Oliver Baumann.
Yet they might have had another opportunity had there been fair play from the referee.
How can I put this politely about only two minutes being added at the end? It was utterly ridiculous and stank to high heaven.
Do you think for a second that, if the roles were reversed and Germany were losing at home, pushing hard for an equaliser, that only two minutes of added time would have been decreed?
Northern Ireland manager Micheal O’Neill speaks to the referee after being defeated 1-0 by Germany during Monday night’s FIFA World Cup qualifier at the Clearer Twist National Stadium at Windsor Park.
Photo William Cherry/Presseye (William Cherry/Presseye/William Cherry/Presseye)
Even if you do only allow 30 seconds per set of substitutions that adds up to 90 seconds.
Is the referee really saying that were no more than 30 seconds of excessive stoppages during the rest of that second half?
All those substitutions themselves actually took more than two minutes in total – 46 seconds for Maximilian Beier replacing Karim Adeyemi, 35 seconds for the double NI substitution with 15 minutes to go, and 49 seconds for the double Germany substitution late in normal time.
With two more German subs coming on in added time, the ref only allowed 36 seconds over the two added minutes for those changes, which were clearly designed by worried German boss Julian Nagelsmann to waste time – and the referee let him do it.
That figure of 36 seconds might sound fair enough, as again those two German subs were brought on at the same time.
Yet from his whistle sounding at 90:20, it took more than a minute for Florian Wirtz and Nick Woltemade to make their way off the pitch and the ref to signal the re-start.
The final whistle did come at 93:10 – but the game had stopped at 92:36 when the ref raced in to book Magennis after his goalmouth tussle with Robert Andrich, who had just come on.
The Green and White Army put it well at the end when they serenaded the Germans with ‘You’re not very good’.
A little humility would go a long way – further than this Germany team will go at the World Cup anyway.
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Dunloy’ss footballers celebrate with the Padraig McNamee Cup, after dethroning champions Cargin.
Picture: Seamus Loughran (Picture: Seamus Loughran)
Dunloy camogie manager Gary O’Kane didn’t miss and hit the wall when he, quite rightly, slammed the Antrim camogie board for their scheduling of county senior camogie final on the same day as Antrim’s senior football decider.
Speaking with all the directness he exhibited on the pitch, O’Kane declared ahead of the clash against Loughgiel: “We would have played any other day at any other time. It should be in the common decency of the GAA to move a game in these scenarios.”
The solution was so simple – bring the game forward to the Saturday, something which both clubs apparently were prepared to do, or push it back a week until the following Sunday.
Surely there could even have been a double-header this weekend of camogie and hurling, with Loughgiel also in that latter final.
Instead, Dunloy supporters had to decide whether to join in the celebrations after their footballers won for the first time since 1936 or travel on to watch their camogs in action.
Equally, the camogie players were not able to watch much of the football final, if any, a game in which friends and even family were involved.
Integration of Gaelic games across all codes cannot come soon enough, although even then you can’t legislate for stubbornness and stupidity.