Football language of politicians during the European Championship is quite old-fashioned

column

Recently I was sitting with Markus Söder with a few other journalists. It was the morning after the coalition had cobbled together a budget. The CSU chairman, Bavarian Prime Minister and maybe-still-chancellor candidate had invited people to a press conference. When he started talking, I couldn’t believe my ears. That happens often when I listen to Söder. But this time it had nothing to do with politics.

The morning after the budget was, as we all know, also the morning before the quarter-final match between Germany and Spain. A country in football fever counted down the hours – and what did Söder do? He said: “The coalition appears to have averted the match point of decline.” And a few sentences later: “The knockout has only been postponed.”

Söder ignores the sensitivities of the Germans

As is well known, there are match points in tennis or volleyball, but not in football, at most in penalty shootouts. And knockouts happen in boxing. Markus Söder, who as head of the CSU prides himself on being close to the people, spoke that day – it has to be said so harshly – without regard to the sensibilities of the Germans. Could a man like that be allowed to govern the country?

And yet almost all of them have recently spoken in such beautiful football images. Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil said after the meeting of the state leaders with Olaf Scholz: “In times of the European Championship, we can remember the old principle: what matters is on the pitch!” At the Union faction’s summer party, Alexander Dobrindt pointed to the Chancellery opposite and shouted: “Over there is the wrong coach, and here is the right coach.” He meant Friedrich Merz, which could have been an indication that the CSU state group leader shares my doubts about Söder.

Football is everywhere right now – even in the vocabulary

Alice Weidel spoke of a coaching team at the AfD party conference, referring to herself and her co-chairman Tino Chrupalla. The leading candidate in the European elections, Maximilian Krah, was dropped, Weidel continued, because in difficult situations it can be better to “take someone off the field temporarily”. It is a popular misconception among people who are only interested in football at major tournaments that players who have been substituted can be brought back on.

Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck described Germany’s economic leadership in Europe as follows: “Organized from the second row, so shirt number 10, Toni Kroos, hanging striker and then playing forward.” Listing all of the footballing mistakes in this sentence would go beyond the scope of this column.

Markus Söder – he’s a dog

What does all this teach us? During major tournaments, politicians have an irrepressible urge to speak in football metaphors. But what seems particularly down-to-earth and original to them is actually just an exaggeration of everyday life. Football language is everywhere. “He scored an own goal” is as common as “Keep the ball flat”. At Fussballlinguistik.de you will not only find countless examples, but also the fact in the “What you really should know” section that the image of the “red card” was first used in the Bundestag on September 4, 1985, almost 40 years ago – by the Social Democrat Herta Däubler-Gmelin.

Markus Söder may even have deliberately avoided a football comparison in order to emphasize his uniqueness. That would have been smart, of course. Or as they say in Bavaria: He’s a real dog.