So, unless I'm becoming even more chronologically illiterate ... the opening game of the 2011 Women's World Cup in Germany, hosted by the current World Cup holders, Germany, is between ... drum roll, please ... Nigeria and France in some city somewhere named Sinsheim.
???
oh, yeah ... later on that day, Germany will be playing Canada in Olympic Stadium in Berlin.
Sinsheim, fyi, according to FIFA "lies at the heart of the Kraichgau region".
... uhhh...
I probably know more German geography than the Average American -- terrifying, considering how limited my knowledge actually is -- and I have not only no idea where Kraichgau is, I've never even heard of it, either.
To put this statement in perspective, I can't actually tell you exactly where Mecklenberg-Vorpommern is ... but I do know it's a state, I can spell it, and I'm pretty sure it's in the former DDR somewhere in the vague vicinity of Berlin. Okay, so just about all of East Germany was in the vague vicinity of Berlin, so sue me. And, yes, I picked that state at random after thinking "hmm, which state sounds the coolest & do I know where it is?" I didn't look at a list of states, I already knew it was one. Really. Being inveterately curious, I of course had to go look. It's in the north-west corner of modern Germany, north of Brandenburg, which is the state surrounding but not including Berlin.
Further on, from FIFA, I read that it's in Baden-Württemberg and is 22 km. SE of Heidelberg.
At least, unlike most Americans, I know what a kilometer is.
Pub Trivia
1 day ago
2 comments:
Well, until maybe about 5 years ago, most people in Germany didn't know where Sinsheim was. Then, the 1. F.C. Hoffenheim ascended from the depths of a lower amateur league to the premier league of the German Fussball (a.k.a soccer). The simple method: Just throw in a bunch of money to buy professional management, team coach, and good players. You need money? Then in Hoffenheim you are lucky because you have one of the directors of SAP (producing accountancy software) as a supporter. That put Sinsheim on the map.
After having written this, I watched "The Damned United"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226271/
The story about how Leeds United acquired a coach it managed to keep for 44 days. Mr. Clough was the coach (d.h. Trainer) for Derby County, taking it on a parallel path to 1. F.C.Hoffenheim, from the bottom of the 3rd league to winning the Premier League in relatively few years. How? Money and a completely obsessed coach.
For an American, it was a relatively amusing flick, given my inability to relate to a sport which is a national obsession. [Yes, we have obsessed sports fans here, but there is no single national sport over which we obsess. Regional, yes; national, no. Go, Wings!]
Mentioning the plot in passing to Mr.Gopher, however, produced him commenting that the coach for Leeds United was Revie, the England coach in '74, not Clough.
Seriously - is there some exotic European Y-chromisome linked behavior that provides innate repository for esoteric sporting statistics like this? Or maybe it's because Germany won the World Cup that year? uhhh ... Okay, HerrGopher knowing who won the world cup that year I understand (duh). Even knowing which teams were playing...? Sure I understand. But knowing who was coaching other teams...? sigh...
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