Aviva Zapata - Notes on the Lansdowne Massacre

When the final whistle went, with the crowds already streaming out, the score said it all. As cheery quips about Angela Merkel are replaced with recriminations and accusations, one fact has already presented itself: The scoreline was extremely flattering. To us. We were hockeyed last night and the visitors should have won in double figures.

Herr Oezil sagt hallo

Never mind the fact that Marco Reus has hairdo like a 1980's Lesbian baddy from a sub-Lethal Weapon comedy thriller. Never mind that the creators of Ren and Stimpy do double takes each time the camera closes up on Mesut Oezil. Germany were something else last night. They had style, finesse, interesting hair (see above) and they had the killer instinct. A team of devastating substance.

There's going to be a lot of talk about Trap (he should go - duh!), that the players aren't of the calibre we need to perform, their confidence went, bla, bla, bla. A lot of excuses and platitudes. The scoreline, the Lansdowne Massacre, showed a gulf between the two sides. This was not a gulf in class, however, but in work ethic. The two teams had more in common than you think, which makes last night all the more frustrating, and anger being an all the more welcome emotion among the Irish sporting public.

Both teams have coaches who need to justify themselves in the eyes of many. Both teams have players, whose commitment to the cause has been called into question by more than just the die hard Dunphys and malcontents. Germany's side has been in the firing line since they failed to turn up against Italy in the Euros, whom they themselves flattered after their blue-tinted humbling in Warsaw: some players wouldn't sing Germany's anthem, an indication of a lack of pride when compared to the Italians; a lack of hunger, an absence of desire to get down and dirty with teams who aren't willing to let them play their brand of Sexy-Fussball. The word Weicheier kept getting trotted out in the German press - these guys, literally their cojones, were too soft. 

The scoreline, and that it should have been worse, is a testament to us not getting the point and needing to be punished for it. In football, as in economics, as in social policy, as in most aspects of life, we are too insular for our own good; too unwilling to look beyond our anglophone comfort zone to see what to do right; too unwilling to prise our heads from that familiar English speaking dark place to get the point and get on with it.

Germany are only as good as they are today, because ten years ago, a guy from the German FA traveled up and down the country doing coaching clinics to identify new talent and emphasize fine ball control skills. They even went to Mecklenburg, a godforsaken place with a population of one inbred stork, some lonely looking skinheads sitting on a sand dune, and Toni Kroos. They found him on Germany's Craggy Island and nurtured his talent in elite training schemes. They put in the spade work and look what happened: Hard work pays off.

Too often we're about the quick fix, be it in terms of our economy - Bertie's Ponzi scheme Tiger - or indeed our football - sign up for any oul' English club and toil away at Rochdale for the rest of your life. How ambitious! Imagine if we were as flighty, as whimsical, as romantic as we are, but were rigorous and brave in what we did as well.

Like Mrs. Doyle, we are hardship fetishists. We get off on the misery. Imagine if we were all that but also diligent, organized, open minded and had a plan as well. We shouldn't be so ignorant of Germany, or indeed ignorant of so many other non-English speaking countries that do things better than us. Despite the abundance of raw talent we so patently have in every corner of life, we have done little more than regress to scraping moral victories. We deserved to be punished last night, if only to remind us that we are capable, if not deserving, of so much better.