How should one imagine the exodus from paradise?

Mind you, from a modern and secular paradise.

A paradise of our time.

And how could such a final picture look like?

What would one see at the moment when the gates close irrevocably and this painful farewell takes place?

Maybe it would be a very banal picture.

One like the photo of Mats Hummels, who on Wednesday after leaving the national team's camp was sitting blankly on a half-height stone wall, his arm lightly supported on a black backpack.

Michael Horeni

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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    In front of him are three business trolleys, anthracite-colored, next to them a carefully packed sleeping pillow and a bulging paper bag from sponsor Adidas, on which the name Hummels has been scribbled with black felt-tip pen.

    In the photo that the Bild newspaper distributed on Thursday, Hummels looks like a man who has just been kicked out of the door by his great love.

    And who has packed the bare essentials and now somehow has to make his way through.

    A few hours earlier, at 6:22 p.m., after a night that did not let him rest, Thomas Müller shared his grief with the world.

    “There it was, that one moment that you will remember in the end, that brings you to sleep at night.

    For whom you work, train and live as a footballer.

    That moment when you have it in your own hands to bring your team back into a close knockout game and to send an entire football nation into ecstasy.

    Getting this opportunity and then leaving it unused really hurts me, ”wrote Müller to the largest congregation in the world, Facebook.

    Love of their (soccer) life

    After returning a few weeks ago, Hummels and Müller have been expelled from their paradise for the second time.

    A pain that probably goes deeper than anyone else who had to pack their trolley suitcases.

    The fact that the two world champions were even ready to return to a desolate national team a good six weeks ago cannot really be explained rationally.

    How after a multi-year odyssey, which had led the national coach and his team in their disorientation to an embarrassing defeat against North Macedonia and a debacle against Spain, a glorious arrival at the final games in London, they actually had to do as well Be a riddle.

    Whether they would play again or not.

    But one should probably not book the return of Hummels and Müller according to the customary categories of profit expectation and profit maximization and thus just one more of the many sporting miscalculations of the past few years. Presumably one gets much closer to the heart of the matter if one suspects their return under idealism. You could also say: The national team was the love of their (football) life for Hummels and Müller.

    But when in this intoxicated state one is hardly able to fully grasp reality, it is no coincidence that it is said for the most beautiful reasons: love is blind. And that, it seems, also expressly applies to Hummels and Müller with a view to the national team. An anachronism in times of globalized and billion dollar professional football, which today actually no longer seems conceivable.