The varying basics of talking and thinking about football are informed by your home team and by the times you live in. Tobias’ home team is Munich (as is mine) and he (and I) underwent the first big trauma in May 1999. It was Wednesday night and Bayern München played Manchester United in the Champions League final in Barcelona. Bayern was 1:0 up and the fourth official indicated three minutes of injury time. Corner for United. With so little time left, Peter Schmeichel, ManU’s keeper, came up to Bayern’s penalty area. Beckham centred the corner, Dwight Yorke, Thorsten Fink, and Ryan Giggs touched the ball, moved it, shifted it, left, back, right, until it went to Sheringham, who nestled the ball in the bottom corner of the net. Minute 90:36.

1:1! Having been behind for most of the match, Manchester pushed extra time (we thought).

30 seconds after the following kick-off, United forced another corner. Now Schmeichel stayed in his half. Beckham swung the corner in, Sheringham, Solskjær, 2:1! (minute  92:17)

Referee Pierluigi Collina had to help most of the Bayern players to get on their feet for the next kick-off. And then it was over. Everything.

It was the Treble for United –– it would have been for Bayern.

Two years later Bayern did win the Champions League. Years later, in 2010, they lost the final to Inter, 2012, they lost to Chelsea. Again München had been the better team but had no luck at all in the penalty shootout. I knew Tobias at that time and we were on our way to Johannesburg. I was in a plane with Julia Hummer (St.Pauli fan) and Arno Brandlhuber (no clue about football) and got the message that Schweinsteiger had missed just before take-off. (Second Fußball-Trauma) Tobias was still in Berlin, watching the game –– which was in Munich! –– on TV. When I saw him a day later in downtown Joburg we were hurt. I remember him guessing that they would not recover, not come back.

In the course of our walk to Miniland Tobias presented his great project about the Double-Berlin, Doppeltes Berlin. A race in representation and architecture between East and West-Germany when the wall was still up. Tobias had performed this already in his Bob-Dylan-manner during the 2081-walk in Berlin. (And later they showed it at HKW). Tobias is an architect studying for his master’s in Nürnberg and he is working at Brandlhuber+.

Back to football: During the walk to Miniland the great philosopher Achille Mbembe told me that Bayern would win the following year and that he sees some wonderful years for German football coming up. And Achille knows what he is talking about, he watches four European leagues every week, one of his best friends is Therry Henry and Achille is an Arsenal fan.

Back to Bayern: Tobias and I watched a CL game together here in Lichtenberg at the Libero. Bayern won but you could see how much Tobias was suffering during the game and he told me he hadn’t been able to sleep or eat in the days before. Now Bayern München won the Treble this year in this wonderful manner: “Mir san Triple”

And Tobias changed in a way. He is a different man.
See for yourself, look at the image.