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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Germany v Portugal Open Thread

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65Comments

  4. 4.

    shortstop

    Regardless of who wins, German food is a travesty, Portuguese chow a delight.

  6. 6.

    Randinho

    @shortstop: I lived in Germany for three years and like a number of the dishes. My wife has visited France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal and says that German bread is the best. I’m inclined to agree.

    I believe that you see far more variety in Portuguese food: an impressive feat for a small country. It seems hard to believe based on cuisines that the Alentejo and Lisbon are in the same country.

    I wouldn’t call German food a travesty, but I believe we dined better and with far greater variety in Portugal.

  9. 9.

    handsmile

    After today’s first match, I’m keeping my fingers away from the keyboard (and my dining options open) until at least half-time, and if I were a smart boy, until the final whistle.

  12. 12.

    Tripod

    The US kicked off its 2014 qualifying run last night by crushing.. ah.. Antigua & Barbuda.

    Where the hell is that?

  13. 13.

    Nethead Jay

    @handsmile: (Copied from the previous match thread, hope you don’t mind). Are you Dutch? I’m sorry, but I really don’t like their current playing style (or lack of). I was a bit worried the first 20 minutes but as the match progressed and we got the first goal I saw some of the traditional sins show up. You’re right there was some luck but for those of us familiar with Stephan Andersen it wasn’t surprising to see him with a couple of world-class saves.

    You’re absolutely right that the Dutch team really need to up their effectiveness if they’re to have any chance against Germany on Wednesday.

  14. 14.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yutsano:
    One day, when I was in Singapore, my hosts invited me to a business lunch in a German restaurant. It was, one might say, not a vegetarian place. There was meat in all the dishes, and in all the dishes but one that meat was pork. The lone exception was a beef dish: Hungarian goulash.

  16. 16.

    Yutsano

    @Amir Khalid: Germans love their pigs. Kinda hard to believe it used to have the largest Jewish population in Europe. I’m surprised there was no veal, although that is more Austrian.

  17. 17.

    SRW1

    Looks like the German strikers watched too much of that Russian guy who wasted, what, nine opportunities.

    Brilliant diver that Nani fella.

  18. 18.

    Randinho

    @Amir Khalid: Gulaschsuppe is a common dish in German cuisine and has been for decades. Frankly that makes a lot more sense than the fact that stroganoff is popular in Brazil.

  19. 19.

    Yutsano

    @Randinho: Turkish food, due to immigration and cheap labour, is also quite popular. Even small towns had an Imbiss stand selling Turkish delights. And baklava. Really good baklava.

  20. 20.

    handsmile

    @Nethead Jay: (#12)

    [Waiting until half-time to reply]

    Actually, a fellow Scandinavian (Swedish by lineage).

    Happy to learn more about Stephan Andersen. My comment was not meant to disparage his creditable performance today, but that old saw about “the goalposts being a keeper’s best friend” seemed fitting.

    As for the Dutch style of play, it enabled them to crush through opposing teams during Euro2012 qualifications. Which makes their cavalier performance today all the more bewildering.

  21. 21.

    Randinho

    @Yutsano: Yeah, one night last month in Mainz we were trying to get a table at a Tapas spot near our hotel and ended up eating some excellent doner kebab instead at a Turkish place.

    When I lived there in the 1970’s the first time I asked anyone for directions it was a Turkish gastarbeiter who spoke no German.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yutsano:
    @Randinho:
    From what I hear, with the growing Turkish ethnic minority there, beef is getting more popular there. So if I were to visit Germany nowadays I might not have so much difficulty finding halal food.

  23. 23.

    handsmile

    Had Pepe, the player I probably most despise in world football, scored that goal at the head of the first half, I would be inconsolable. (thus now almost certainly tempting fate…)

  24. 24.

    shortstop

    @Amir Khalid: @Yutsano: Sweet jesus, do Germans love their pigs. During my extended time there, I wanted to weep at the frequency (that is to say, 90%) at which pork appeared in things like “salads of field greens” and “vegetarian vegetable soup”…ugh.

    There are specific dishes that tradition German cooks do well (without frying, breading, creaming or otherwise constantly heavying things up; never mind the meat obsession), but they are rare enough to put Germany at #1 on my list of Places I Never Want to Get Stuck Eating for a Long Period Ever Again. And I love nearly every other cuisine. Oh, well, Germans, like Americans, will never be masters of subtlety in much of anything.

  25. 25.

    Randinho

    @Amir Khalid: I was there last month and many small towns (Worms, Kaiserslautern, Speyer, Bingen, Remagen IIRC, Trier) all had Turkish places serving halal food.

    Köln is 20% Turkish.

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    @Randinho:
    The Germans spent something like 30-40 years kidding themselves that the Turkish Gastarbeiter were expatriates rather than immigrants. That’s why they called them guest workers. It’s only in the last decade or so, if I recall correctly, that they’ve been allowed to become citizens. As I understand, Islam is now the largest non-Christian faith in Germany and die Mannschaft now has Turkish-German stars.

  32. 32.

    lol chikinburd

    Is Löw waiting for the formality of 60 minutes to replace Podolski? He’s just been sad. Roll the damn dice on Kroos or Götze already.

  33. 33.

    Randinho

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah it was absolutely digraceful. For years Mehmet Scholl was the only player on the Mannschaft that had Turkish ancestry. In the 2002 WC Turkey had three starters who were born and grew up in Germany, while Germany had a player born in Poland (Klose) and a player born in Switzerland (Oliver Neuville, whose first language was Italian and could barely speak German).

  34. 34.

    Nethead Jay

    @handsmile: Aah. Then we can tease each other in upcoming matches ;)

    You’re right that with the shot on the pole and a couple of other situations luck was involved. And there’s a questionable hands situation towards the end of the match. Stephan has been a bit in the shadow of Thomas Sørensen but he’s very good and actually so is our 3rd string Anders Lindegaard. So happily we’re strong in the goalie position.

    Again, you’re right that they played some good games in the qualification. Cavalier does seem a fitting word but that’s just our luck.

  35. 35.

    Amir Khalid

    @shortstop:

    I wanted to weep at the frequency (that is to say, 90%) at which pork appeared in things like “salads of field greens” and “vegetarian vegetable soup”

    Auch in der vegetarische Gemüsesuppe? You’re right, that is a bit much.

  39. 39.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Amir Khalid:

    The way that some Germans I’ve known perceive who is and who isn’t German cracks me up. A woman I worked with said I was Polish, based only on my last name(K***itz).

    Well, turns out that the family is from a village of the same name, derived from that of a Prussian junker, which is now in Poland. Also turns out that the family left that village because the pussified Kaiser dumped our family’s strict evangelical form of Lutheranism as the state religion in favor of a more liberal form of Lutheranism.

    GOMEZ!

  41. 41.

    Amir Khalid

    @Amir Khalid:

    Auch in der vegetarische Gemüsesuppe?

    should be

    Auch in der vegetarischen Gemüsesuppe?

    said the compulsive grammar fussbudget to himself.

  43. 43.

    Randinho

    @Amir Khalid: When I was there last month it was my first time in 21 years. I had forgotten how mind-numbingly difficult the language is. Most conversations started out “Entschuldigen. Mein Deutsch ist ganz schlecht.”

  44. 44.

    Amir Khalid

    A skin-of-the-teeth victory thanks to a late goal should have an interesting effect on Germany’s confidence in the later group matches, nicht wahr?

  48. 48.

    lol chikinburd

    Who put in the cross to Gomez for his goal? I have now variously seen it attributed (by different Internet live commentators) to Boateng, Ozil, Khedira, and Schweinsteiger.

  51. 51.

    IM

    Anyway the game isn’t over yet. A game last 90 minutes and is only over then the referee whistles.

  55. 55.

    IM

    Dragged over the finish line.

    Well, the group of death isn’t looking that impressive so far.

  56. 56.

    Amir Khalid

    @Randinho:
    I’m self-taught in the language myself (with a CD-based kit I found at the bookstore, supplemented by grammar workbook practice) and I have no conversational experience to speak of. But aside from that tricky case system and the weird gendering of nouns, I haven’t found German that hard — it’s way easier than French.

  57. 57.

    Randinho

    @Amir Khalid: That and the damn verbs at the end of the sentence.

    Social issues with grammer in German are very tricky. I was 17 in Ludwigshafen looking for a concert hall and mispronounced the name when I asked someone who was at most 20, using thew Sie, formal form of address. He responded using the du, familiar form of address, clearly meant as a way of dissing me.

    Most of my experience is conversational, so I’m sure if I lived there again, I’d get it back. I learned Portuguese primarily through conversation and having the background in Spanish.

    In other football news, Brazil lost to Argentina 4-3 with a Leo Messi hat trick. Looks like I sleep on the couch tonight . . . ;-(

  58. 58.

    handsmile

    Excellent match (by group opening match standards). Finely balanced throughout, open play from both squads, periods of dominance by each side. As Randinho noted above (#45), CRonaldo was neutralized for the most part (and Nani was a non-factor), but Portugal impressed above its pre-tournament reputation.

    A first-rate cross and header to account for Germany’s goal. And Neuer’s save in the closing minutes was immense, but not too surprising from one of football’s very best goalkeeper. (A bit of luck too for the Germans, that it was the youngster Oliveira who found himself with the opportunity.)

    The match featuring linguica and herring on June 17 should be a tasty affair.

  59. 59.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @IM:

    Well, the group of death isn’t looking that impressive so far.

    They tend to be deadlier in theory than practice.

    Win Group B, impressively or not, and it should be a gentler route to the final than most.

  60. 60.

    Nethead Jay

    @handsmile:

    The match featuring linguica and herring on June 17 should be a tasty affair.

    Hehehe, can’t disagree with that. And for that matter, the other match Wednesday could prove interesting too ;)

  62. 62.

    handsmile

    @Randinho: (#57)

    Brazil lost to Argentina 4-3 with a Leo Messi hat trick. Looks like I sleep on the couch tonight

    You’ve written of your hopes/plans to resettle in Brazil and I had thought that your wife and her family were from there. Does this mean that you root for Argentina? If so, what a brave, brave man!

  63. 63.

    Yutsano

    @Amir Khalid: Your fluency in English helps. While English is a bastard language with Romantic influences, at the core it is still a Germanic language. And I assume you know that the national language of America was almost German. Turns out a lot of Hessians really liked Pennsylvania and stayed.

  65. 65.

    Amir Khalid

    @Randinho:
    At 17, you must have been like a baby in the eyes of that 20-year-old German. Maybe that’s why he decided to duzen you. English speakers have a tough time with du/Sie (and its French equivalent tu/vous), because “thou” has fallen out of use in English. my own language, Malay, still has “engkau” (thou) in common use so I don’t face this problem. In fact, in you think the du/Sie problem is tough, you should try learning Malay. The grammar is simpler (said the native speaker) but the social-register thing is much more complex than just a choice between two pronouns.

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