Nationalmannschaft Not as Dirty as it Sounds
Where: Germany
During the two day break before the World Cup quarter finals began, Germany tried to figure out what to do when there's no soccer games to watch. TV morning shows ran phone-ins, asking "What are you doing to fill the gap?" while bakeries promoted their soccer-ball shaped bread rolls as a match substitute. Carbs for Cleats, we believe it's called.
One hot topic was the lack of a suitably cool team name for the German national team. They're jealous of teams like Australia who are (or were) plastered across the evening news as the Socceroos, or Italy, with their sexy Azzurri--the Blues. Some people will tell you the German team name is Die Nationalmannschaft--the national team--but that's more of a technical description, not something you'd scream after scoring a goal.
A southern German radio station ran a poll this week in which thousands of listeners voted for a new team name. Some of the candidates were not especially inspiring: Germans Eleven (a lovely combination of English words but German apostrophe-free grammar), Kicker and Die Elf--the Eleven--were all losers in the vote.
The winners weren't much better: Third place was snatched by DeFuNa, an abbreviation derived from "the German national team"and the silver medal went to something a little zany, Germaniacs. By far the most popular proposal was Die Adler--the Eagles. Perhaps they'll be shouting "Go Eagles!" tonight against Argentina (a.k.a. the Albicelestes--White-Sky Blues) but maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board.
[Image via Dario*/Flickr]
Related stories:
Germans Love Socceroos [Jaunted]
Team Nickname Guide [New York Times]
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