Don’t be shy, say hello!

February 6th, 2011 | by: Anne | Comments Off

Group hug!

I’m trying very hard to get this blog hopping again, and I really appreciate the welcome you’ve all given me! I’ve never done anything quite like this before, so I hope you’ll excuse any blundering as I feel my way in the exciting world of sports blogging. Now, I know there’s a whole lot of you out there, passing your eyes over these words, but not commenting – the numbers tell me so! (And numbers don’t lie!) I think the best part of being a fan is sharing your opinions with other fans, so it would be great if more people came out of the woodwork and started participating in the discussion. (I just hope the silence doesn’t constitute a boycott and that you all secretly want me out of here yesterday… though if that’s your opinion, share that too!)

To that end, I thought we might do a “meet and greet” type of thing. Share some details about ourselves, maybe chatter in the comments a bit – whatever you want. Here’s a little questionnaire to start things off, heavily inspired by a similar post over at Palermo Offside (thanks!). I’m particularly curious of the origins of the readership – since this is, in fact, an English-language blog about the German national team, are there many Germans out there at all? If you hail from other places, why do you follow Die Nationalmannschaft? My own reason is simple – I fell in love with their football – and I’d love to hear other peoples’ stories.

Name:
Age:
Location:
Heritage:
Occupation/Student:
Activities:
Favorite Club Team (Bundesliga):
Favorite Club Team (Non-Bundesliga):
How did you start following the Nationalelf?*
Favorite Nationalelf Moment:
Favorite Nationalelf Player (Current**):
Favorite Nationalelf Player (Former):
Favorite Non-German Player:
Least Favorite Nationalelf Player:
Your IDEAL center-back pairing for EURO2012***:
Your IDEAL attacking midfield trio (in a 4-2-3-1) for EURO2012:
Are you on Twitter? If so, what’s your username:

* “By being German” is an acceptable answer
**As in has played for the senior squad at least once and still has potential to be called up
*** Pretend this is Football Manager, you have control, and Jogi’s favorites don’t play a role.

I’ll get us started!

1. Name: Anne
2. Age: 23
3. Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
4. Heritage: Scottish, English, who knows what else… but no German that I know of!
5. Occupation/Student: Graduate student (PhD in very busy semester… so do forgive any dips in activity)
6. Activities: Watching football! And playing when I can. As a grad student, life consists of working in lab and drinking to forget about working in the lab…
7. Favorite Club Team (Bundesliga): FSV Mainz 05
8. Favorite Club Team (Non-Bundesliga): Arsenal
9. How did you start following the Nationalelf?*: I watched WC2006 as a casual viewer and loved two teams – Germany and France. That ended pretty heartbreakingly (curse you Italy! *shakes fist*). Then I kind of tuned out… until WC2010. That tournament was a potentially life-altering experience. I certainly wouldn’t be writing this right now if I hadn’t seen it! I was dismayed to hear of all the injuries that had befallen Germany, pleased and proud to discover my favorite player from 2006 had the armband, and excited/nervous to see what they could do. Then they demolished Australia with youthful pizazz and I’m pretty sure it was true love from that moment. I woke up absurdly early to watch the trainwreck that was the Serbia match. I found a bar in Times Square just so I could watch my boys crush England. And I cried for two hours after they capitulated to Spain. Even as the Bundesliga has enchanted me, die Nationalmannschaft remains number one in my heart.
10. Favorite Nationalelf Moment: Arne Friedrich’s goal against Argentina. It was a glorious and well-deserved moment for one of my favorite players, and the cherry on top of an unbelievable treat of a game.
11. Favorite Nationalelf Player (Current**): Bastian Schweinsteiger
12. Favorite Nationalelf Player (Former): Jens Lehmann
13. Favorite Non-German Player: Ádám Szalai or Robin van Persie
14. Least Favorite Nationalelf Player: Heiko Westermann… just one of those things you can’t explain, he rubs me the wrong way!
15. Your IDEAL center-back pairing for EURO2012***: Hummels-Friedrich
16. Your IDEAL attacking midfield trio (in a 4-2-3-1) for EURO2012: Götze-Özil-Holtby
17. Are you on Twitter? If so, what’s your username: @cheekybackheel (all football all the time!) or @GER_WorldCup for news about the team

Aaaand go!

NEW NOTE! Past blogger Nick has kindly helped out by poking at Disqus and retrieving all the comments that were marked as spam. He has figured out the following guidelines about posting: Please refrain from using numbers (excluding years), dashes, and other non-alphabetic characters in a random non-formatted fashion. Better yet don’t use them at all and write in complete sentences.

Accordingly, I’ve removed the numbers from the quiz, and hopefully that will allow them to make it through the filter. I have moderating capabilities now so I will rescue any posts that get sent to the trash from now on! Thanks for all the great comments, I’m really enjoying learning more about you!