I’ve seen Petr Nedved and Jan Koller and Tomas Rosicky Czech shirts. Italy’s Puma stuff is everywhere. I even saw a German fan waiting for the bus the other day wearing Stephen Appiah’s Ghana shirt.
Shops at the airport. Kiosks at the train station. Window shopping on the Moenkenbergstrasse. None have thread on the U.S.
I haven’t been in Nike Town in Hamburg yet, mainly because shops have been closed for the last two days as Germany has largely stayed inside because of “Pfingsten,� a religious holiday that is linked to Easter.
But, as one of my collegues, Luis Arroyvea of the Chicago Tribune, pointed out to me, you can’t go a half hour without seeing Michael Ballack’s Matt-Damon-on-growth-serum face.
Why not one piece of memorabilia celebrating the player that nearly matched him over 90 minutes four years ago, Landon Donovan?
The only answer is that the U.S. remains a team that Europe doesn’t take seriously. The World Cup is a competition where fans can be neutrals. Fans around the World consider themselves to be a fan of any team that will entertain them, like the current Brazil team or the Holland group of the 1970s.
But not just great teams. There is a lot of neutral sentiment right now for the Ivory Coast team that should be really fun to watch this month.
One of the Norwegian journalists with who I shared a train compartment today said that there was “zero� feeling in his country that the U.S. team will survive a group that includes European heavyweights Italy and Czech Republic.
And that’s in a country that was annihilated by the U.S., 5-0, earlier this year.