Which style of play will prevail at the European Football Championship? Sports sociologist Thomas Alkemeyer on the beauty of the short passing game, the German team's status as favourites and the German media's view of the host countries Ukraine and Poland.
QUESTION: Mr Alkemeyer, who will be European football champions in 2012?
ALKEMEYER: No team has yet defended its European title. But there is always a first time: Spain will be European champions again.
QUESTION: And the German team?
ALKEMEYER: It has developed fantastically under Jogi Löw: Technique, wit and pace - these are qualities that we have been looking for in German football for many years in vain. However, I doubt that the Germans will really be able to live up to their status as favourites, which has been conjured up by the mass media. A lot will depend on whether the Bayern bloc can cope with the shocks, indeed offence, to its quintessentially Bavarian Mia san mia self-confidence.
QUESTION: The defeat in the Champions League final against Chelsea is still having an effect?
ALKEMEYER: It's not just the one defeat, it's several crushing defeats in a row: against the Dortmund champions, second places in the German championship and in the cup, and the Champions League final in their own stadium - that must have simply shaken the self-confidence of the Bayern players, who are programmed to win. Even if they are real professionals.
QUESTION: So you rely on the Spaniards' quick short passing game ...
ALKEMEYER: ... who have simply mastered it perfectly. It's pure beauty: how the parts of the team operate as mobile, self-organising systems. Here, the ideal player is not the brilliant playmaker of days gone by. Instead, he is an active force within a supra-individual fabric of other forces. He must be able to receive the ball with a single touch and pass it on to a well-positioned team-mate.
QUESTION: Yet FC Barcelona, the home of concept football, lost to the destroyers from Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final.
ALKEMEYER: Of course: the chances created by systematically overstretching the opponent have to be utilised. That's what the Spaniards will do - with or without the striker Villa. But what interests me even more as a sports sociologist is the view of the game. Because when it's not individual players who are the real players, but rather collectives that behave in a way that is appropriate to the situation - then that's simply incredibly interesting from a sociological point of view.
QUESTION: In what way?
ALKEMEYER: The playing field is a kind of natural laboratory in which we can observe and analyse how social orders are created in practical actions. In this respect, football is an excellent field for sociologically informed cultural analyses; it allows us to examine exemplary changes in the deep structures and guiding principles of modern society.
QUESTION: The fact that Ukraine and Poland were awarded the European Championship was a real surprise in 2007. For you too?
ALKEMEYER: It made me curious about the countries. However, what I notice about the reporting in the German media is that the roles are distributed like in a soap opera: Poland is the good guy, where everything runs like clockwork in terms of preparation, organisation, comfort and democracy; Ukraine, on the other hand, plays the part of the bad guy: corrupt, disorganised, stupid, criminal, insecure and undemocratic. Only a few voices from Ukraine can be heard in the German media, such as that of the author Serhij Zhadan, who lives in Kharkov. The fact that Western politicians' expectations of the Ukrainian government are narrowly focussed on the "Tymoshenko case" met with little understanding from him.
QUESTION: Back to the game: what if Germany do become European champions?
ALKEMEYER: I wouldn't have anything against it. Football just has to be beautiful. But the conditions are right.