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Do you remember Paul Gascoigne?
"Gazza" was a gang leader on the square and not a peaceful person outside either.
Before the European Championship semi-final in Wembley in 1996, he shouted in the "Daily Mirror" with a steel helmet on his head: "We're declaring football war on Germany!"
When British humor gets angry, it no longer understands fun and is mobile.
Even now we Germans are the damned "Krauts" again, this time the accusation is: kidnapping a minor.
The young man's name is Jamal Musiala.
He went through all the English youth teams and sang "God save the Queen" before the games.
He also worked as a young star for Southampton FC and Chelsea FC, and this week he is also making his full international debut - but, and here it comes, not for England.
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Jamal, who the football world considers a diamond in the rough, plays for Germany.
Because Joachim Löw showed Boris Johnson in the middle of his vaccination euphoria that we are still there too.
In mid-February, the national coach visited Carolin Musiala and reminded her that she gave birth to a healthy boy named Jamal on February 26, 2003, but neither in Southampton nor in London, but in Stuttgart.
“You're a Swabian,” Jogi said to Jamal.
"Jamal has huge potential"
Daniel Richard, the father, was also informed by the national coach about this, and then the question had to be clarified: How does a family decide in which the mother is a German with Polish roots, the father is Nigerian and the son is a Swabian who lives his life mainly spent in England?
A few days later, the then 17-year-old announced: “I have a heart for Germany and a heart for England.
Both will continue to beat. "
But above all, two legs are important in football, and they are doing magic for us from now on, possibly as early as Thursday in the World Cup qualification against Iceland.
“Jamal has huge potential,” feels Löw.
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So we Germans can do something after all.
And this homecoming was not easy.
After two years in Stuttgart, his mother's studies had taken little Jamal to England via Fulda, and that might not have changed.
But then came Brexit.
The Musialas thought of Germany again, FC Bayern helped with the relocation, Jamal soon scored his first goals - and rose to the category of "high national interest" for the DFB.
Musiala could make his debut for the German national team against Iceland
Source: AFP
Such a thing quickly leads to diplomatic entanglements, it's like vaccination, like AstraZeneca, only the other way around.
This time the English curse and abuse Löw as a chicken thief in a way that has not happened to any national coach since Berti Vogts.
Back then it was about Sean Dundee.
The young man from South Africa was a goalie at Karlsruher SC, and in December 1995 he was due to make his debut for his country in Johannesburg, against Germany.
But two days before the game, his KSC trainer Winnie Schäfer had a short talk with Dundee, and he must have injured himself in the middle of the conversation.
"I suddenly had calf problems," revealed Dundee later - at least he fled the South African camp.
Kinkel made Dundee German in an urgent procedure
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Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, who lived around the corner from Winnie Schäfer's in Ettlingen, then made the South African German in an urgent procedure, there were valid reasons: Dundee drove a German car, had German neighbors, an account in a German bank, scored his goals with German balls in front of German spectators, drank German beer and had a German girlfriend.
What then unfortunately did not materialize was the happy ending.
Sean Dundee (r.) 1997 in conversation with the then national coach Berti Vogts
Source: pa / dpa / Ingo_Wagner
When Vogts called him, Dundee was seriously injured this time and he never made an international match.
He was only called up for basic military service in the Bundeswehr.
The South Africans rubbed their hands in glee - but at the same time their coach Clive Barker asked furiously: "Do you Germans, such a big football nation, need that?"
Back then already.
We had our talent lull around the year 2000 and above all asked every Bundesliga Brazilian about his or her roots, and the root canal treatments afterwards repeatedly led to the goal.
Paulo Rink found a German great man, Kevin Kuranyi also knew a solution, and when Cacau said that his VfB teammates in Stuttgart called him “Helmut”, there was no turning back either.
Kennedy was a Berliner
Stefan Kuntz, the German U21 coach, has now announced that VfB can help German football again: Mateo Klimowicz, the 20-year-old talented striker, will probably make his debut at the European Championship against Hungary on Wednesday.
Klimowicz was mostly Argentinian so far, he was born in Córdoba, but with his father Diego he spent his scoring days in Wolfsburg, Dortmund and Bochum and since then has two passes.
It's a bit like Mauro Camoranesi, who became world champion with Italy in 2006, but wore a typical Argentine braid and said: “I continue to feel like an Argentine.
It's a question of football, nothing else. ”Nobody bothered that he was also briefly Italian - after all, John F. Kennedy stood in front of the Schöneberg town hall in 1961 and said:“ I'm a Berliner. ”
We live in modern football and in a world that asks a talent like Musiala difficult questions: Should I play for England, for Germany or for Nigeria?
Or even with Klimowicz, who also has Polish roots, for the Poles alongside Lewandowski?
Stuttgart's Mateo Klimovicz (r.) Was nominated for the EM squad by U-21 national coach Stefan Kuntz
Source: pa / dpa / Thomas Frey
“In the end, I just listened to my feelings,” says Musiala.
And the English should have known, because a profile of him is circulating on the Internet in which he wrote after the word Favorite Food: "Maultaschen."
Jamal is Swabian.
Basta.