Thomas Müller is 37. He plays for the Vancouver Whitecaps. And he tells the story of the 2014 World Cup on a podcast called The Late Run. A podcast. I learned it from my weekly, which learned it from VoetbalPrimeur, which heard it through earphones. It’s a long road. I’m not criticising. I’m comparing.
The facts, then. Brazil-Germany, 1-7. Müller says he spent the last quarter of an hour doing nothing but avoiding David Luiz. They had a discussion, he explained, because neither of them was happy with the other’s behaviour. When the ball came and David Luiz was close, he said he didn’t want it.
He also remembers half-time. “We looked at each other in the dressing room at half-time: 0-5. It had really happened,” he said. The manager, Joachim Löw, had asked them to finish the match calmly and with respect. Germany then beat Argentina 1-0 in the final.
Calmly and with respect. It’s the only sentence in the story I could have written myself. In 1980, a man leading by five goals pulled up his socks and waited for the whistle. He told no one anything. Twelve years later, he still told no one anything. The memory stayed in the dressing room, with the studs.
Today a world champion keeps an anecdote for twelve years, then hands it to a microphone. Note that I’m not against progress. I’m against this progress, which consists of saying everything one day, calmly, with music beforehand.
Marcel, a podcast is just radio you listen to when you want. You listen to the RTBF, after all.
I told her that the RTBF, the public broadcaster, I listen to when it’s on. It decides the time. It’s more honest. I folded the weekly back to the page with the result, 1-7, which hasn’t changed since 2014. I check anyway. Well. It’s the times.
It’s true, we checked: VoetbalPrimeur.be.
