Don't Cry For Us, Argentina!

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Text by Alex Marashian Photos by DEDON Tour du Monde Team

Don't Cry For Us, Argentina!

At last, I understand why they call it The Beautiful Game. After years of living in Europe, learning to like football but not to love it, I’ve finally seen the light. It came to me inside Cape Town Stadium on Saturday night in the form of a vision — that of the German national team creaming Argentina, 4 to 0, in the 2010 World Cup quarter-finals. 

I call it a vision because I still can’t believe it was real — and because I’ll probably never see anything like it again.

When DEDON first purchased the tickets – a total of 100 of them — back in February of this year, there was no way of knowing that Germany, our home country, would be playing in the quarterfinals at all, let alone in the particular quarterfinals game for which our seats were reserved. But DEDON founder Bobby Dekeyser, a former professional goalkeeper for FC Bayern Munich, is a natural-born risk taker and it usually pays off. As for the rest of us, given how lucky were to be seeing a game at all, and a Germany game at that, we really couldn’t have asked for more — but we got it anyway: perfect weather on game day.

Excitement had been building all morning before the match. Then, around 2:15, we piled into a trio of coach buses and headed off to the stadium. As with any DEDON crowd, this one consisted of people from around the world. In addition to DEDON’s own far-flung members — from Hervé and Vince Lampert from the Philippines to David Kennedy from the US to design director Nicola Rapetti from Spain — there were importers from more than 50 countries, including old hands like Oya Ogurcu of Turkey, DEDON’s first-ever importer, and brand new faces such as Mo Ghandehari, DEDON’s importer to Iran.

Despite the group’s diversity, however, most people seemed to favor Germany. Of course, this might have something to do with the enthusiasm of the DEDON team itself, many members of which had flown in from the company’s Lueneburg headquarters especially to organize the annual importers’ event here in Cape Town. These diehard fans could be found in the back of the bus for most of the ride to the stadium, painting each others‘ cheeks — and those of anyone else, myself included, who was feeling the magic — black, red and gold.

The Cape Town Stadium itself is attractively designed, its silver-mesh fabric wrapped tightly round an oval-ringed frame, but now was hardly the time for architectural criticism. We quickly found our way through the crowds and into the corporate hospitality suites embedded within the structure itself. Here, we were treated to a buffet meal and drinks, though I don’t think anyone was feeling particularly hungry — emotions were running too high for that. We did have time for a nerve- calming beer or two, and then, before you knew it, we were being summoned to our seats.

The crowds were going wild, the vuvuzelas blaring, as the players came on to the pitch, but the Argentine fans far outnumbered the German ones, at least by my humble estimate. I would have thought this was to Argentina’s advantage, but the first few minutes of the game quickly proved me wrong. I’m no football expert, and the game has been commentated on enough already, but the Germans seemed more like a force of nature than a bunch of ordinary mortals. It has been said that the first 20 minutes or so of the game were the greatest in World Cup play — ever. Again, it’s not for me to say whether this is true, but I’d like to believe it is, if only to be able to say, “We were there!”

But in truth, Germany’s stellar performance was partly wasted on me. I just don’t understand soccer strategy enough to appreciate most of what I was seeing. Fortunately, I was sitting next to Bobby Dekeyser throughout the first half. I tried to glean as much insight as I could from his commentary, and that and the big screen TV mounted across the pitch helped me to process what I was seeing. But how different it is watching game in a stadium from watching it on TV. For one thing, the perspective is not flattened by telephoto lenses, as it is on the screen. I now have a whole new appreciation for the distances players run, their speed and the precision of their footwork.

At half time, we were feeling cautiously optimistic. Germany was playing great, but Argentina was still in it. Who knew what Diego Maradona and his team were plotting down in the bowels of the stadium? 

Our fears were quick dispelled, though, in the 68th minute, when Klose daintily tapped a perfect pass from Podolski over the line, to the bring the score to 2 to 0. As for the remaining 22 minutes or so, they went by as in a dream — one that you wanted to play over an over again in your head. That said, it was nothing short of a nightmare for the Argentina fans, some of whom has already begun crying before the game was even over.

There was endless hugging and backslapping in the DEDON section after the final whistle blew. I think all of us, even those who really didn’t care much for football, had the feeling that that we had witnessed something special — “football history”, as one of my friends back in Berlin described it when I told him I had seen the game. That evening, the post-game party Team DEDON had planned was a blow-out. 

People were dancing on air. A visit from the 2006 German team’s star goalie, Jens Lehmann, only added to sense that it was somehow all meant to be.

We all know the end of the story. Just four nights later, Germany would lose to Spain and everything we had witnessed in the Argentina game would somehow seem to have been for nothing. But it wasn’t for

nothing: This is a very young team and a very promising one. They’ve shown that they’re already capable of great things. And now they’ve also discovered their limitations. In four years time, four years of working to overcome those limitations, the German national team will be in their prime. Watch out, World. Like DEDON itself, they’re just getting started.